Gender stereotyping is definitely an uprising issue for concern. More and more people have joined in the fight of banning gender stereotypes now more than ever. And it’s GREAT!

The representation of both genders have massively taken a hit from advertising don’t get me wrong. However, men were not the victims of sexism in ads throughout the historical, and recent years. It doesn’t go un-noticed that women still suffer from sexism on a daily basis, whether it be micro aggressive forms of sexism, cat calling, belittling, etc. Or outright discrimination and inequality.

Therefore, for this post, I will be discussing the struggles women face due to sexism in advertising (don’t worry there will be another for men… EQUALITY!)

It is massively important that everyone feels accepted, fairly represented (in the media) fairly treated and not discriminated against. However this unfortunately isn’t the case, especially in advertising.
There have recently been some movements of prgress in the advertising industry resulting in some ads being banned, and many others called into the limelight and interrogated for their misrepresentations.

BBC Watchdog Cracks Down on Gender Stereotypes    << MUST READ!

Women are often represented as being hypersexualised for the attention of men, domesticated and doing the sole maintenance of the house, or have unrealistic body expectations. This is incorrect, demeaning, and can destroy self-confidence. Ultimately creating a generation of disheartened, disempowered and overlooked women.

This is damaging for women who suffer from the self-fulfilling prophecy as they are surrounded by these adverts depicting messages of what they believe they should do or be like. And creating a false ideology of what a woman ‘should be’ would only result in some women feeling like they will never be good enough if they aren’t domestic, have the perfect body or don’t see themselves as the typical ‘sexy’.

Here are 3 ads, which will each demonstrate

• the domestic stereotype
• the hypersexualised/objectification stereotype
• the unrealistic body expectations for women

Evidently, you can see from previous adverts sexism was a lot less subtle than today’s standards. However, sexism has not been totally ruled out of advertising just yet. It’s less of “women are below men” and more of “women need to look nice”. It’s more of a bad stereotype really. Below are some ads that I will collectively put into a slideshow which have been very recent and been called out on their subtle or not-so-subtle sexism.

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Let me know your thoughts are on this topic!

Jamie,