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Gender Biases in Pakistan Television Prime Time Commercials: A Content Analysis

Masrur Alam Khan, PhD *

ABSTRACT

The study of television messages , particularly television commercials , is crucialdue to the large amount of time a person expends in watch inges television. Thesecommercial s are designed for persuasi onve and impact , and they contributemightily to cultural norm (Polly, 1986).

Television is a powerful socializing agent (Barner, 1999; Bretl & Cantor, 1988)and is particularly influential in the arena of gender identity .: As Barner (1999,

p551) has noted, “ oOne of the most obvious and important characters of televisionactors is their gender, and one of the most important „lessons‟ that children learn

from TV actors is how gender fits into society .” (Barner, 1999, p551).

The purpose of this study is to examine the portrayal of women in television prime television commercials in Pakistan and to documentdocumented the stereotypes associated with women in today ‟s television commercials. To achievethi s,s purpose the content analysis method will behas been used to analyzetelevision commercial broadcast during prime time over the four nationaltelevision channels. Content analysis is a method often used by researchers incommunication studies in order to analyze messages in the media (Kaid andWadsworth, 1989). The foremost aim of this study is to analyze differencesbetween male and female characters in Pakistani television commercials in termsof the main variables used as stereotype indicators in prior advertizing studies

such as gender of primary characters and of voiceovers, product type, age ofcharacters, role, setting, house work and occupational categories .

Key Word: Gender Bias, Stereotype, Prime Time Commercial, and ContentAnalysis

The author is a

professor, and head Department of Mass Communication and Department ofInternational Business & Marketing at NUST Business School, National University ofSciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan. Email: [email protected]

Comment [M1]: The development of culnorms?

Comment [M2]: Characteristics?

Comment [M3]: Needs to be broken dowmore manageable sentences to aid clarity ofmeaning

Formatted: Bullets and Numbering

mailto:[email protected]




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Introduction

Television viewing today is more than enjoying one‟syour preferred program while sitting beforea television screen . It is highly deeply influenced by commercials played during programintervals, all of which seem to be aimed at persuading us to buy things. as we sit before thetelevision screen and watch commercials trying to persuade us to buy something. The people

behind the production of commercials use glamorous objects to appeal to the consumers , and to,in turn, to provoke them to buy their productthe product being advertised. Originally,commercials began. Radio commercials preceded television commercials on the radio simply

because the medium of the radio has been around longer thanpredated the medium of television.Once the television was invented and introduced to the public, commercials became more andmore beneficial. A variety of explanations exist s as to why television advertising is preferred toradio ads ., some of what are: O o n the television , a consumer s is are able to see what theyhe may

be purchasing and , television promotes the selling to individuals as well as toa family, on thetelevision commercials come at the proper psychological time for the viewer between showsunlike print advertising, has the same advantages of radio sound and most of the time betterquality sound is heard on the television, and more people watch television because it is habit-forming (Seehafer, 1959).

The strategy of a commercial is to pursue the viewers and influence their opinion all about inthe world and how to get it. Through television commercials the producers are able to reach awide range of people and promote their products much faster the world over. The televisioncommercials have exciting eaffects on people. Even though many people consider thatcommercials influence consumers behavior toward a product and make consumers more ready

to buy and affects a person ‟s “attitude toward a product” ( Baldwin, 1982).

The rR esearchers have observed that electronic media producers have bifurcated audiences toachieve their goals while targeting them according to their motives. The advent of tT elevision

promoted led to the promotion of lifestyle division based on their socio-economic status.“Although segmented markets can engender a tight sense of community among people whoshare similar backgrounds, such differentiation can also promote suspicion of others” (Coltrane& Messineo, 2000, p. 367).

The media analystsMedia analysts have observed that during a period of 1990s, a televisioncommercial reproduced stereotyped characters specifically focusing race and gender, (Coltrane& Messineo, 2000, p. 385). The literature provides enough evidence to strengthen such biases inelectronic media. Turow (1997) observed such segmentation approaches for increasing racialtensions during the late twentieth century.

Gender is one of the most studied social phenomeno an as it is the main pattern referent that wegenerally use in determining how to act and interact with others. For this reason, it is important

Comment [M4]: Rephrasing needed to clmeaning

Formatted: Highlight





Comment [M5]: Who media producers oaudiences?


Comment [M6]: Link between quotationforegoing sentences not clear


Comment [M7]: That literature will stren

these biases?

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world, and consequently learn to relocate their own viewpoint. It is evident from recent studies

that there has been a notable increase in the number of female news presenters despite . Whereas,television directors ‟ were of the opinionperceptions that females were less likely to beconsidered taken seriously by the viewers. However, it is likely that their physical appearance

play s a more significant role in their selection than that of the male counterparts for the job.fortheir male counterparts.

Literature on gender has significantly revealdepict ed its significant biases in television veryfrequently . As of 2003, men outnumbered women in all aspects of television commercials. 54%of primary characters in the commercials were male (Scharrer, Kim, Lin, and Liu, 2006) ., andfurther more Further analysis of all such characters has revealed that, male charactersoutnumber female characters by more than 3 to 2 (Stern and Mastro, 2004). Similarly, malesalso were thealso did more voiceover workmore frequently , with 85.9% of the off-screendescribing being avoices being male voice (Coltrane and Messineo, 2000).

Thought inIn most of the cases , domestic characters were the main consideration of theresearchers. In a content analysis of the literature focusing on gender and domestic householdtasks in television commercials, Scharrer , et al Kim, Lin, and Liu (2006) concluded that malecharacters are more likely to be portrayed outside of the home, while female characters are moreregularly depicted in domestic environments, particularly the kitchen, bathroom and laundry area s. In such domestic surroundings , female characters were more likely to be involved inhousework and childcare than men. When men were shown performing domestic tasks, theywere often shown as incompetent, mostly meant to be a source for humor. These portrayalsstrengthened traditional gender roles by involving insinuating that “men are somehow „naturally‟ill-suited for certain types of work, and therefore those chores are best left to women” (Scharreret al, p. . 216).

Throughout analysis of empiricallyAnalysis of empirical data it has been provenrevealed thatmale s are more likely to hold ing white collar jobs in workplace were twice as likely to hold high-level business roles, and four times more likely to have white collar positions than females(Hong, 1997).

These representations may help to conclude viewer ‟s belief that men are more competent in business roles, particularly those involving of high power. To the extent that men are shown asmore involved in family life, they still tend to portraydepend largely on knowledge and activitiesthat are stereotypically male (Kaufman, 1999). Bartsch , et al Burnett, Diller, and Rankin-Williams (2000) studied viewed whether men or women were more likely to sell domestic

products such as food, cleaners, cosmetics, etc., or non-domestic products, including thingsoutside of the home, such as travel, credit cards, and automobiles. Their findings indicated thatrepresentative while the percentage of females shown selling for domestic products stood atat 59%, compared to men‟s 41% for men , and men (70%) were significantly more likely to be

product representatives for non domestic products, showing reflecting an increase in gender bias

for product representatives compared to commercials ten years prior earlier (Bartsch , Burnett,Diller and Rankin-Williams,et al 2000).


Comment [M12]: Not clear if this is abotrends or work trends as depicted in media. Pleamake clear

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It is very much evident through literature reviewReview of the literature indicates that there

exists a constant and significant variation in the style males and females are displayed incommercials. Craig , ( 1992 ) reveal s ed thatwomen are shown featured less in televised advertisements, and are still identified primarily bytheir family role as housekeeper and caretaker. Men are shown in stereotypical roles of authorityand dominance. Whereas Scharrer et al, 2006 identified have found that when attempting non traditional gender roles such as cleaning , men are often seen as incompetent, reinforcing thetraditional role of women as caretakers. Stern and Mastro (2004) looked at age variable as thesegender differences seem to occur regardless of the age of the primary characters. Finally suchillustrations clearly differentiate that males and females should confine themselves to a morenarrow mind set of conventionally defined activities, and promote inequality throughamplifications of difference between the genders (Coltrane and Messineo, 2000)

Gender biases in television commercials is one of the area oan area off population diversitywhich ahs has been addressed by researchers in most of the developed countries. Bartsch ,Burnett, Diller, and Rankin-Williams et al (2000) replicated a study of gender presentation whileanalyzing 757 commercials from spring 1998 and analyzed for product type, gender of productrepresentative, and gender of voice-over. The study found unequal gender presentation asdemonstrated by an overrepresentation of female as domestic product representatives and maleas non-domestic product representatives were found (Bartsch, Burnett, Diller, and Rankin-Williams (2000)

Another area of study regarding biases represented in commercials is age. Age is used as amarket strategy for number of products , which includes television entertainment programs aswell. Senior citizens are hardly portra yed it in advertisements and commercials (Singer, 19830.“Most people are not glamorous, many are over age 60 or members of visible minority groups”therefore using real people …. or accurate representation of real people in commercials can

positively impact the effectiveness of an advertising campaign (Singer, 1983, page 36)

In the backdrop of literature review, the following hypotheses are constituted to strengthen thesocial effect and cultivation theories.

H1: Females in prime time television commercials are primarily youngerH2: More females than males are product users in prime time television commercials.H3: Females‟ main job in prime time television commercials is as homemakers. H4: Males govern voiceover in prime time television commercials.H5: Males are depicted as product representative more often than female.H6: Females are shown in inferior positions in most advertisements.

Methodology

The main purpose of the study is to describe the degree to which population diversity is presentin televised commercials. The research design necessitates the utilization of a descriptiveresearch study. Descriptive research is a “type of conclusive research that has as its major




Comment [M13]: ?


Comment [M14]: repetition


Comment [M15]: if the paper is about gbiases, then this would be extraneous as it talks

about age bias

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objective the description of something…. u sually market characteristics or functions ‟ (Malhotra,

2004, page 78). To achieve this, content analysis was the method utilized.

Earlier, several studies have utilized content analysis to determine the level of diversity incommercial advertising (Bristor, Gravois, & Hunt, 1995, Coltrane& Messineo, 2000. Contentanalysis allows a systematic, objective, and quantifiable analysis of message characteristics. Thismethodology is applicable to many areas of study, and os the fasted growing techniques used inmass communications research (Neuendorf, 2001) Content analysis dictates the use of an priordesign as variable, measurements, and coding methods are determined before any observationstake place.

The present study followed content analysis techniques to testify the research hypotheses asfollowed by Krippendorff (1980) and Riffe, Lacy and Fico (1998).

The study was based on a sample of television advertisement run by three popular entertainmenttelevision channels of the country, GEO, ARY and HUM. A total advertisement 406 during

prime time (20.00-2100 hrs) for one week of February 2012 were coded according to thevariables used for in the hypotheses in the study. The dependent variable is the televisioncommercials and the independent variables are the models used within the commercials such as

gender, age, occupation, product type, product representative, and voice-over. Thesecombination of variables were used by Mastro and Stern, (2003). However, the scope of thisarticle is examining only inclusiveness of diverse populations, not the wider reaching scope ofstudy that larger research projects have included. Therefore, the variables examined were limitedto gender, age, product, product users, and voiceovers.

He television commercial codebook was prepared to analyze the commercials and coding procedure was reviewed to insure face validity of the data. The most popular entertainmenttelevision channels were selected and recorded their primetime commercials for the review.

Coding CategoriesEach television commercial was coded along the following four dimensions.

Age Category:This coding dimension divided into three categories under teen age (below 19 years), middle age(20- 35 years)and older (above 35 years and coded “one” , “two” and “three‟ subsequently. Gender Representation:This coding dimension concerned the number of gender (male and female) appearing in a givencommercial (coded as "one," and " two” for each category)

Homemaker : female are shown as a main figure of the commercial involved in homemakingactivities and coded according to the time period allocated to the character.

Voiceovers : all such commercial shots carrying background recorded voice by gender.Coders were trained before recording the data while coding one hrs primetime transmission fromone of the sample channels which comprises 10% of the total sample for inter-coder reliability

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followed by coefficient computation. The overall inter-coder reliability coefficient was between

.85 and .87.

Results and Analysis

H1: Females in prime time television commercials are primarily younger

The sampling frame of one week prime time television commercials of three leading televisionchannels (ARY, GEO and HUM) of the country yielded a total of 336 commercials duringFebruary 2012. Out of these the sample period containing 336 commercial characters. Out ofthese 275 was middle age between 20-35 whereas 41 were under teen and 20 characters were 36and over. The findings confirm the hypothesis that females in prime time television commercialsare primarily younger through a cumulative data of these three channels (Table-1). Moreover,this finding is further endorsed by their respective channel as females were portrait as a centralfigure in prime time commercial i.e., ARY ( 45 ) GEO (87 ) and HUM (143)

Table 1 Females in prime time television commercials are primarily younger

Below Teen 20-35 36 and above TotalARY 15

23.80%4571.42%

034.76%

63

GEO 1211.53

8783.65%

054.80%

104

HUM 1424.26%

14384.61%

127.10%

169

Total 4112.20%

27581.84%

205.95%

336

Females in prime time television

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H2: More Female than Male are Product Users in Television Commercials

Female were depicted more often 53.21% of the times as “product -users” than men ( 26.14%)of the time. Almost all three channels retained the same status of superiority over male

population, as this difference between males and females in the category of product use is verymuch prominent in table:2.

Table 2 Product Users in Commercials

Male Female Both AnimationARY 21

29.16%3954.16%

056.9%

79.72%

72

GEO 3629.26%

6552.84%

1310.56%

97.31%

123

HUM 5724.67%

11851.08%

4218.18

146.06%

231

Total 11426.14%

23253.21%

6013.76%

306.88%

436

Product Users in Commercials

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H3 Females‟ main job in prime time television commercials is as homemakers. Females are mainly depicted in television commercials as homemakers and they are very often shown in

professional occupations or as celebrities. However male were portrayed only as celebrities as 16.30%, as professional 13.58% while children as 15.21% against female as house wife and celebrities as 39.13%and 9.78% respectively (table-3)

Table 3: Gender Distribution of Television CommercialMalecelebrities

Femalecelebrities

HouseWife

Children Female professional

MaleProfessional

ARY 1118.03%

7 11.47% 1829.50%

1422.95%

69.83%

58.19%

61

GEO 2121.64%

1212.37%

3637.11%

1313.40%

55.15%

1010.30

97

HUM 2813.33%

178.09%

9042.85%

2913.80

511.23%

3516.66%

210

Total 6016.30%

369.78%

14439.13%

5615.21%

225.97%

50

13.58%

368

Gender Distribution of Television Commercial

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H4: Males dominate voice-overs in prime time television commercials.Each advertisement was coded for voiceovers according to the coding sheet. Results revealed thatvoiceovers dominance in television commercial significantly supported by the data as majorityof the commercial depended on male i.e., 50.73% whereas females are not preferred (23.89%)and in most of the cases they shared voiceovers with male (25.36%). The result also support the

previous findings as males have been given preference over females for voiceovers in televisioncommercials (Courtney & Whipple, 1974; Culley & Bennett, 1975; O‟Donnell & O‟Donnell, 1978;Schneider & Schneider, 1979).

Table 4 : Males dominate voice-overs in prime time television commercialsMale Female Both

ARY 3750%

2128.37%

1621.62%

74

GEO 7956.02%

3524.82%

2719.14

141

HUM 9047.12%

4121.46%

6031.41%

191

Total 20650.73%

9723.89%

10325.36%

406

Males dominate voice-overs

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H5: Male are depicted as product representative more often than female.A frequency test was employed to get the percentages of female and male illustrated as product

representatives in these prime time television commercialsIt revealed that more male are portrayed as product representatives than women was not supported.Results indicate that female were represented more as product representatives. The overall frequencycount of three television channels for female as “product representatives” was 202 (62.15%) and formale 123 (37.84%) which gives a glaring difference of gender representation in commercial, (table 5).

Table 5 Product representation of gender in television commercialsMale Female Total

ARY 2042.55%

2757.44%

47

GEO 3538.88%

5561.11%

90

HUM 6836.17%

12063.82%

188

Total 12337.84%

20262.15%

325

Gender distribution in television commercials

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H6 Female are shown in inferior positions in most advertisements.Female are shown in subordinate positions in most advertisements, was significantly supported One ofthe aspects of stereotypical portrayals disc ussed by Masse’ and Rosenblum (1988) was stance. Masse’and Rosenblum (1988) claimed that most women in television commercials were portrayed insubordinate positions like doing inferior jobs and working at home. After statistical analysis applyingcrosstabs in SPSS, outcome reflect that more female (62.15%) than male (37.84%) were depicted inlower position (table 6)

Table 6: Inferior position of females in advertisementMale Female Total

ARY 3046.15%

3553.84%

65

GEO 5037.03%

8562.96%

135

HUM 9445.63%

11254.36%

206

Total 174 42.85% 232 57.14% 406

Inferior position of females

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LimitationsThe study has quite a few limitations. Initially, the sample was confined to only leadingtelevision channels of the country and had a time constraints. Though the study was first of itsnature in the area of mass communication in the country and the size of sample was also verysmall so its results could not be generalized however it provides a significant direction to thefuture researchers to examine the roles assigned to the models in the commercials. Neverthelessthe study provides enough benchmarks for the future comparisons of prime time televisioncommercials in the backdrop of gender diversity and advertisers and their agencies‟ liking foroutline of the leading cultural norms.

ConclusionBased on review of literature, and research hypotheses testified in the present study, it is confirmthat prime time television commercials provide realistic representations of the co untry‟sstereotypical reflection of cultural norms. Television commercials play a significant role in todaysociety. “Researchers argue that the sheer pervasiveness of advertising may enhance its

potential to influence television viewers” (Mastro & Stern , 2003, page 638). Advertising canmake or break stereotypes (Bartsch, Burnett, Diller, & Rankin-Williams, 2000). Thereforeadvertising bring about behavioral change and breakdown social misperceptions of the public.

Gender bias portrayals of females in electronic media specifically in television commercialsrequire serious attention of the establishment, human right activists and media professionals.Since television is considered the most populaces mode of media, it would be interesting tounderstand the representation of female in television and how does it affect the mindset

negatively mainly when it portraits females in repulsive and oppressive manner in commercials.

The findings of the study exposed that imbalanced gender representation is dominant in primetime television commercials. Females are overrepresented as product users for the domestic

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products and depicted as homemakers whereas a gender bias is clearly reflected in television

commercials where males governed voice-overs of all products irrespective of their nature of the product. The findings of this gender bias also endorsed the finding of past researches whichconfirm that there is no change toward such approach (Signorielli, McLeod, & Healy, 1994) and(Garst & Bodenhausen, 1997). Though in previous studies there has been a common problem ofidentifying the nature of characters of commercial, however, the present study has explicitlyconfirms its hypothesis as female were treated in inferior positions while narrating its stereotypeapproach towards its situation. In conclusion the study suggests that while providing realisticrepresentations of Pakistani cultural richness and subsequently maintaining the socialresponsibility, advertising should not simply reflect social values, rather than bringing a socialchange.

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