Impact of advertisements on gender bias

Abstract

This project was aimed at understanding the impact of advertisements on the implicit associations made by people regarding gender roles. With a deep interest in the socio-cultural context that we operate in, we thought of pursuing this project to understand the impact of advertising on the images, values and meaning that people implicitly associate specifically with women. In the larger sphere of things, we believe that advertisements shape social beliefs and attitudes to some extent, and we wanted to see how this impact can be evaluated in addition to the usual metrics of ad recognition and sales. Through this project, we attempted to obtain a deeper understanding of linkages between women’s portrayal in advertisements and the impact of this on implicit associations that people make with respect to gender roles and representation. Our objectives with the research project were three-pronged – we intended to find out what are the key parameters that can be used to judge the inherent sexism in ads, how do Indian advertisements perform when evaluated on these parameters and how do these parameters impact the associations that people make regarding gender roles and stereotypes. The first question was answered with an extensive review and analysis of literature from various cultures and countries. This was followed by an in-depth analysis of Indian advertisements across product categories from 2019 to see how they fare on the chosen parameters. Finally, we conducted primary research through projective techniques and Implicit Association Tests (IATs) to understand implicit biases, associations and stereotypes ingrained in people’s minds.