Gender portrayal in British and Japanese TV advertisements

Abstract

This study focused on cultural differences in the portrayal of gender in British and Japanese television advertisements. In all, 196 British advertisements were analyzed using a coding scheme based on established coding categories (Furnham, Babitzkow, and Uguccioni, 2000; McArthur and Resko, 1975). Contrary to prediction, chi-square analyses showed less gender stereotyping in these advertisements than reported in previous British studies (Furnham and Skae, 1997). Next, 228 Japanese advertisements were analyzed. It was found that Japanese advertisements showed a high degree of gender stereotyping as could be expected from Japan's high masculinity score (Hofstede, 1991). Analyses were carried out for ‘visual’ and ‘aural’ characters, and for advertisements with both one and two central figures. Results for the aural and 2-central figure sub-samples were more significant.