The Universality of the Portrayal of Gender in Television Advertisements: A Review of the Studies This Century
Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8 (2):
109-124 (2019)Abstract
In the 40 years since McArthur and Resko (1975) published their paper on how men and women are portrayed in TV advertisements, there have been around a hundred replications and extensions in many different countries. There have also been various reviews of this literature (Collins, 2011; Furnham & Mak, 1999; Furnham & Paltzer, 2012; Grau & Zotos, 2016; Matthes, Prieler, & Adam, 2016). This paper looks specifically at the content-analytic studies done since 2000, and over 50 such studies from many different countries were found. These were examined to understand how the studies have, or have not, moved the literature and research on over the years both methodologically and theoretically. It also examined the nature of the current concerns in this literature. Various consistencies in the portrayal of the central character over all the studies done at different times and in different countries was noted. The central theoretical issue still concerns whether TV mirrors or molds sex roles i