Remaining Ads with Stereotypical Gender Roles

Jessica Diamond
Cars.com - With Knowledge Comes Confidence
This commercial, at 60 seconds was longer than most of the super bowl commercials, and contained much sexism and assigned stereotypical gender roles. First of all, the entire commercial is narrated by a man. Therefore, less than 50 percent of the dialogue belongs to women. The first 5 seconds shows a woman cooking in the kitchen; this is a gender role. By the tenth second, another gender role is displayed. The father both fixes a bike and offers his guidance in teaching his son how to ride it. The boy then displays his brilliance by helping an attractive young woman at the beach. The director chose to show a woman as vulnerable, rather than a man. Sexism is evident here as the boy helps the weak woman. Note that in this scene, the boy physically looks down at the woman. This may show signs of superiority and strength. The next scene shows the male teenager aiding a tiger. The director could have chosen a less dangerous animal to be in need of help. However, the way the teenager fearlessly helps the tiger shows bravery especially in contrast to the nervous women standing helplessly behind him. Lastly, the man uses his brilliance to protect a group of cheerleaders from a tornado. Again, the women are shown as vulnerable and in desperate need of help. I believe that, although discrete, this commercial contains much sexism.

Late Show: Leno, Oprah & Letterman
This commercial didn’t seem to display much sexism. Although there were three people in the commercial, two men and one woman (James Leno, Oprah and David Letterman), the lines were split up into fairly equal quantities. The only details that may spark recognition of sexism, is that Oprah sits between the two men in order to separate them. She acts as the mediator but this might come off as her being a nag. Also, while the two men are comfortable wearing football jerseys and jeans, Oprah is wearing a suit. Other than the discomfort and the stereotype of women nagging, sexism really isn’t significant here.

Dockers: Wear No Pants
This commercial advertises jeans for men; therefore, it aims to capture a male audience. Only men are included in the commercial. The only gender role expressed is the slogan at the end of the commercial: Wear the Pants. This phrase can have another meaning in that “the pants” symbolize the power. For instance, the saying “she wears the pants in the relationship” refers to a woman who has more power or has more say in a relationship. “It’s time to wear the pants” may touch upon male dominance or belittling women. However, this may be overreaching. Overall, this commercial is narrated by men, includes men and advertises pants for men.

Teleflora.com: Rude Flowers
There are both male and female characters in this commercial although the women seem to have more dialogue. The first ten seconds show a woman talking to her assistant in a rude manner. This may generalize that women with power treat women with less power as inferior beings. The middle third of the commercial shows the rude woman receiving flowers in a box: A dispassionate gesture in comparison to the vase product. Perhaps the first third of the commercial in which the boss acts rudely is, in part, cancelled out because she receives flowers from a “low-life”. This is a better message than a caring woman receiving flowers from a low-life. The last ten seconds of the commercial show the assistant receiving flowers in a vase: The nice gesture. Although, the women come off as clingy and picky, there really isn’t much sexism here. Both women receive flowers, which seem to be a genuine gesture in the first place.

Angela Yu
EA, "Dante's Inferno"
It's an ad for a video game. The hero is the man and the helpless victim is the woman.

Winnie Wong
Bud Light - Light House
This advertisement shoes that women appear to be more passionate. The woman in the beginning compliments the man on being so environmentally responsible with such a passionate tone.

Focus on Family - Tebow and Mom
Yet again, the caring parent displayed here is the mother. Women are seen as the one who takes care of the children and the well being of the family in general. Here in this commercial, the father is no where to be seen.

Universal - Robin Hood
The men are the ones who are fighting and are also the lead role. The woman appearing is only viewed as an accessory to the man for sexual purposes.

Doritos - Play Nice
Even though the mom is older, she, being the woman still has her son protecting her. The boy appears to be very young and is already appearing to be so aggressive as opposed to a young girl being aggressive.

Bud Light - Observatory
This goes back to the roles of women in a commercial. There are women bu they have no lines. Instead, they appear more as the background and accessories for the men to experience sexual pleasures with when they start kissing.

Go Daddy. Com - Danica Patrick
Women are seen as more caring and they usually are the ones giving pleasure. In this commercial, the one massaging is a woman as opposed to a man.

Bud Light - Voice Box
The women are stereotyped as the ones buying the groceries as part of caring for the home. The man just takes the beers and calls people over for a party.

Sheldina Henderson
HomeAway.com - Hotels
The ad consists of numerous men, and only one woman. If the woman would’ve had a line or two in the commercial then, the ad, would not have been stereotypical, however being that she doesn’t, the ad is a bit stereotypical. The woman is shown numerous times, with a man who seems more than likely to be her significant other, however each time, the man is talking and the woman is showing her agreement with him by simply nodding, however throughout the entire commercial, she says nothing.

Vizio - Beyonce
This commercial does show stereotypical gender roles, in that although Beyonce spoke first in the commercial, the other people in the commercial were all male. Another stereotype is how the woman Beyonce is dressed. She is shown in a red dress with make-up, and her hair is seemingly perfect. She looks as if she performing in front of a live audience or possibly going to a photo shoot. All of the other men are just basically laid back. For example there is a man with dressed as a zombie and a man just lounging on the couch. Only the woman in the commercial is made to look “perfect”.

Diamond Foods - Nuts & Popcorn
In the beginning of the commercial there are two women who portray dolphins. They jump out of the water to catch the food in their mouths that the male announcer throws at them. Although there was one other male catching food, the male did not appear until after the two women were shown, and the announcer does not acknowledge the male, instead he says “Good job girls”. The women were seen as just what they were portrayed to be; animals. Although the male in the commercial jumped for food once, he manages to keep his “macho macho-ness” by jumping through the ring of fire. Jumping through a ring in the air alone is hard, but the fire adds to the difficulty, so by male jumping through it, he is in a way showing his masculinity.

Noopoor Akruwala
Motorola - Megan Fox
Actress Megan Fox is taking a bath while advertising the new Motorola phone. She takes a picture of herself and wonders what would happen if she sent the picture out to make it public. Some men then view the picture and are ultimately “seduced.” However, there is absolutely no connection between her sitting in a bathtub and the new phone except for her to look “Sexy” while advertising it.

Example of Ads w/ no Overtly Stereotypical Gender Roles

by Jessica Diamond

Monster.com - Beavers
The commercial used a beaver to advertise their website. In my opinion, sexism was not used to promote the site. The beaver had no signs of gender specification. There was absolutely no dialogue in the commercial. The beaver could be either a male or a female. Therefore, there really can’t be any gender role assignment. There were only a few seconds (seconds 24-26) that could be considered as sexism. These few seconds showed the beaver in a hot tub with a blond, affectionate woman indicating the success and fame the beaver had achieved through his violin playing. However, that scene was short and fairly harmless.

Bridgestone - Bachelor Party
This Bridgestone commercial featured three men and a whale in a car. The men, therefore, obtained all of the dialogue. I don’t think this commercial portrayed sexism. There weren’t any gender stereotypes involved. The sole message was that reliable wheels come in handy after a wild, unpredictable night.

CareerBuilder.com - Casual Fridays
The careerbuilder commercial doesn’t seem to be sexist. The main character is a man and has a large majority of the dialogue. The narrator, also a man, has a few lines near the end of the commercial as well. However, both men and women are present in the commercial. The only obvious gender role is that the boss is a male. Besides that, the commercial does not assign gender roles or display sexist stereotypes.

Hyundai - Brett Favre
This commercial advertises Hyundai car and saying that they obtain the insurance of America’s best warranty for the next ten years. The commercial uses a football player (Brett Favre) and his potential retirement as an analogy. The commercial targets the future as being generally unpredictable in contrast to the dependability and predictability of their car. Although the commercial features only a man, the man is a football player which logically fits into the super bowl event. Therefore, this does not portray any sexism. Women are not included in this commercial and there is no gender role assignment or stereotypes. Therefore, I do not think the commercial uses sexism to advertise the product.

Dove - You Are a Man
This dove commercial has many elements. First of all, there is only one man prevalent in the commercial and the narrator is a male as well. However, this is a commercial for a man’s product so this is not a sexist characteristic. The comical song shows a man’s mental development as he grows up into his manhood, accepts his role as a husband and father while finding his identity. Pretty deep concepts for a soap commercial if you ask me! Nevertheless, in breaking down the song, I find that, the steps they use to describe the process of a boy becoming a man and then a man becoming a man “at ease” aren’t sexist at all. They use common obstacles like wanting to be good at sports, training to become strong and learning how to be cool as steps to achieving manhood. These steps might be male gender roles, however; none of the examples look down on woman. Therefore, this commercial does not display sexism.

NFL - NFL Draft
This commercial was 10 seconds long and did not display sexism. It was very short and to the point. Only men were featured because it was a football draft commercial involving male football players. No women were in the commercial and no gender roles of any sort were assigned.

NFL - The Who
This commercial only featured music from The Who. It had no narrator or characters. Its purpose was to tell the audience that The Who would be the half time show at the super bowl. The commercial appealed to both a male and female audience. No sexism was present.

Conclusion

by Angela Yu

We examined a total of 61 ads. Here are our findings.

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*Example of "Gender not specified" is an ad that feature non-gender specific animals

In analyzing the the ads for Super Bowl XLIV, we noticed a few ways in which sexism may be present. One of the ways is shown in the pie chart above. For a show that has a large female audience (almost half of the viewers were women), the ads were surprisingly lacking in women. Super Bowl 2010 was watched by 48.5 million women, an increase of 17% compared to last year and yet advertisers didn't think it was very important to have women in their ads. This is illustrated by the 1st pie chart which shows that 31% of the Super Bowl ads shown featured only men. When this is compared to 5% of the ads that featured only women, the difference is obvious.

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Category A: Ads where women spoke ≥50% of the dialogue
Category B: Ads where women spoke less than 50% of the dialogue
Category C: Ads where women didn't speak at all

For the ads that had dialogue and featured both women and men, we examined the percentage of dialogue spoken by women in relation to the overall length of dialogue. In this area, there was also a surprisingly large number of ads where women spoke little dialogue or didn't speak at all. In other words although women showed up in the ads, they didn't really speak much if they spoke at all.

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In this part of the analysis we found that the majority of the ads didn't portray overtly stereotypical gender roles. One possible reason for this is if the ad's focus isn't on relationships between men and women. However, a troubling percentage of the ads did show stereotypical gender roles. In THIS POST, there are explanations on how we found the ads we examined sexist.

In summary, Super Bowl 2010's ads were problematic in many ways. A significant number of ads didn't have women in them and if they did they rarely played significant roles. In ads where women were present, they were rarely given a lot of dialogue. Also, a big percentage of ads portrayed stereotypical gender roles.