Sex-Role Stereotyping in Television Commercials: A Review and Comparison of Fourteen Studies Done on Five Continents Over 25 Years - Statistical Data Included

Sex Roles: A Journal of Research,  Sept, 1999  by Adrian Furnham,  Twiggy Mak

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United Kingdom. Manstead and McCulloch (1981) showed that 81.2% females were portrayed as product users, in contrast to 22.4% of males; on the other hand, males comprised a larger proportion as the authority (77.7%) than females (14.8%). Furnham and Skae (1997) found that most of the advertisements consisted of authoritative central figures, and both sexes were equally represented as the authority (83.5% for men, 84.6% for women).

Europe. In Italy, 69.7% of females were product users and 77.6% of males portrayed as the authority. In France and Denmark, most central figures were product users (more than 60% of both males and females); however, females were still more likely than males to be the users (79.7% in Denmark and 86.7% in France) and males were slightly more often the authority (37.9% in Denmark and 33.3% in France). In Portugal 77.5% of the male central characters were depicted as authorities, whereas only 29% of female characters were depicted as authorities.

Mexico. In Mexico (Gilly, 1988), most central figures were depicted as the users of advertised products, yet females were more frequently portrayed as the users (83.7%) compared to males (51.2%) and males were more likely to be the authority (48.8%) than females (16.3%).

Australia. The Australian study (Mazzella, Durkin, Cerini, & Buralli, 1992) showed that females were significantly represented more often as product users (68%), while males were usually portrayed as authoritative central figures (68%).

Asia. This is a study with data from Hong Kong, where men dominated as the authority (76.4%) in the current study, while women were more often the product users (78.5%). Such differences were as significant in Indonesia; 73.8% of males were presented as authoritative central figures while 57.4% of females were delineated as users (Furnham et al. 1999).

Roles

America. Bretl and Cantor (1988) showed that women were more likely to have a dependent role (53%) compared to men (27%). On the contrary, professional roles were more often presented by men (21%) than women (11%). Craig (1992) found males more likely to be portrayed as celebrities and professionals and females as interviewer/demonstrator, parent/spouse, or sex object/model in daytime television. Males were less likely than females to be portrayed as spouse or parent during the day (17 vs 32%) and also in the evening (9 vs 21%).

United Kingdom. Manstead and McCulloch (1981) demonstrated that males often had autonomous roles (89.9%), while females frequently had dependent roles (74.1%). This stereotype was less strong after 16 years, when Furnham and Skae (1997) found that most central figures turned out to be interviewer/narrator. Still, more women were assigned dependent roles (13.5%) compared with men (0%), while men tended to be interviewer/ narrator (80.3%) more often than women (60.4%). However, more women were depicted as professionals (26.1%) than men (19.7%).

Europe. A significant difference was found in Italy, where females were persistently portrayed as having dependent roles (66.7%) and males were more likely to have professional roles (48.6%). Men were also more often the interviewer/narrator (25.2%) than women (10.6%). Sex-role stereotyping in France was stronger than in Denmark: French advertisements showed 63.3% of women with dependent roles and 57.5% of men as professionals; in Denmark, most central figures were depicted as having dependent roles and stereotyping was less strong but still existed--82.8% of women had dependent roles, compared to 66.7% of men. In Portugal 60.3% of males, but only 16% of females, were portrayed as interviewer/narrator, whereas 6.4% of males but 50% of females were portrayed in a dependent role.