Gender Stereotypes in Magazine Advertisements: A Content Analysis

Running head: Content Analysis
Content Analysis
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Authors Note
Introduction
Advertisement often uses gender stereotypical images to establish the role of gender
in relation with other. Advertisement agency mainly devise strategies based on gender
because there us tendency for which people define themselves by gender relations.
Researchers and scholars suggests that body image and gender are now getting closely
related, because particular portrayal of body image on the advertisement effects our own
perception regarding our own body. Before delving deeper in the topic, it is very important to
understand, the difference between sex and gender. Feminists argue that, sex refers to the
biological traits and gender represent the social and cultural mores that are taught in the
process of socialization. Therefore the gender roles that are internalised and imbibed through
the process of socialization, gets affected through the media and media channels especially
through advertisements. It is often argued that images used in advertisements tends to
generate vast array of social cues and it is through this way one learns about the gender roles
related to felinity and masculinity. The portrayal of men and women is based on the
construction of femininity and masculinity. The purpose of this research is understand,
whether magazine advertisement uses dominant ideals of femininity or masculinity to sell
there products. The magazine that I have chosen for doing this assignment is “Prevention
Magazine”, which is a health magazine that promises to inspire one to live and love one’s
own life. It also helps to harness energy and confidence, however this magazine is targeted to
woman who are especially over the age of 40. This magazine has information related to
fitness, health and food and recipe. The research is based on the content analysis on this

Running head: Content Analysis
particular magazine and I have used the method of coding in order to categorize the
qualitative information that I have derived from the magazine.
Research method
The tool for understanding the content in magazine is coding, which is an analytical process
in which data both in qualitative and qualitative form are categorised. The coding sheet
involves 16 rows and 20 columns. The number 20 involves the number of advertisement that
I have come across represented in the coding sheet as “Case”. The coding is based on the
intensity of male and female exposure in the advertisement. In order to measure the level of
intensity variable in case of men and women and unisex product is measure by a) activities,
b) role, c) apparel, d) appearance, e) demeanour and finally the score which indicates how
strongly advertisement has used the dominant ideals of femininity and masculinity. Along
with this, the size of the advertisement and the particular page number is also coded for future
references. These variables will be numbered 1 if there is stereotypical presentation and it
will be marked 0 if there is no stereotypical presentation. The advertisement products is also
listed that includes cosmetics, clothing including shoes, jewelleries including watches and
protein pill including supplements. There was the mention of other products like unisex
clothier, furniture, and other household products and so on.
Research results
The results after conducting the research were very nuanced because, the products which
were unisex products like furniture and household goods, medicine cosmetics that includes
sun’s cream , both feminist and masculinity is used to communicate with the consumer.
However, there are certain discrepancies like when the demeanour of females was used
communicate with the readers even when the product was unisex. The products, which are
women oriented like jewellery or apparel has used female appurtenance, look and demeanour

Running head: Content Analysis
for communicating with the audience. The similar thing has been used in the case of men but
the idea of masculinity outnumbers the idea of femininity. However their portrayal is not
much of a contrast because even though M_score has higher numbers like 5 or 4, F_score is
distributed evenly with a recurring number 3 with a single case of 4 and in two cases of have
1 out of 20 cases. Therefor it can be conclude that both masculinity and femininity is being
used for communicating with the audience at a glance. Even in the unisex products, the
demeanour of female is used to but the intensity of the preconvinced notions is applied more
on the male products.
Discussion
With the onset of globalization and urbanisation and with the advance of communication and
transportation, the transfer of ideas do not take much time. Television or print media
generally rely on the use of stereotypical representation, which refers to the preconvinced
ideas that renders incomplete meanings. The result of this study shows that men and women
are ideally portrayed in different ways, even though the line of demarcation is blurring,
especially in the case or unisex products (Quayle et al 2019.). This is because both male and
females are seen to represent unisex products like furniture or household good. However, in
case of men, the stereotypical presentation is more vivid and they fall systematically in line
with the traditional sex-role stereotypes. Men are overrepresented in the commercials of the
advertisement of the magazine and were portrayed as authoritative experts; they seemed to
occupy space similar to the traditional setting. In these advertisement, the men were
represented playing sports, athletic, driving a car; their appearance indicated their affluent
status. The body stature represented the generalised ideas like tall, confident and muscular
image. Moreover the demeanour also repented the relaxed, assured and low camera angle.
The case is quite similar for women, where they tend to represent the motherly affectionate,
neat, properly dresses and long hair, slim, petite, clean and elegant. Using Hofstede’s cultural