“Women's Lib-ers” versus Independent Women: A Study of Preferences for Women's Roles in Advertisements

Abstract

Young college women who are “independent” and who express profeminist attitudes are shown not to react significantly differently to women's roles in advertisements from women who are not “independent” and do not express profeminist attitudes, or from an intermediate group called “neutrals.” Some implications for advertisers are discussed.

What Matters More—Breaking Tradition or Stereotype Content? Envious and Paternalistic Gender Stereotypes and Advertising Effectiveness

“…Such a sample is bound to hold more liberal gender attitudes. However, even investigations that used a clearer division into traditional and liberal groups (e.g., work orientation, belonging to feminist organizations) did not always find gender ideology to be predictive of ad preference (Whipple & Courtney, 1980; Duker & Tucker, 1977). It should be stressed, however, that the lack of gender attitude effects here does not prove that gender attitude has no effect on the effectiveness of gendered ads.…”

“…However, Whipple and Courtney (1980) demonstrated equal effectiveness of traditional and progressive ad strategies used in television commercials for food and cleaning products. Duker and Tucker (1977), on the other hand, found that traditional housewife ads were more effective than were any of the three nontraditional portrayals (i.e., working mother, modern woman, professional) that they tested.…”

“…For example, gender‐role expectations (Putrevu, 2004), gender identity (Morrison & Shaffer, 2003), belonging to feminist organizations (Ford & Latour, 1993), and career and homemaker orientation (Barry, Gilly, & Doran, 1985) have been shown to predict the effectiveness of (non)traditional ad strategies. However, other researchers have not found variables such as feminism (Duker & Tucker, 1977; Whipple & Courtney, 1980) or career versus homemaker orientation (Bellizzi & Milner, 1991) to be predictive of advertising effectiveness. With regard to male versions of the ads, neither attitudes toward male gender roles (Garst & Bodenhausen, 1997) nor gender identity (Debevec & Iyer, 1986) have been found to affect the effectiveness of the (non)traditional ads.…”

“…A fourth problem concerns inconsistent operationalization of ad effectiveness. Measures used in previous research have included affect and purchase intention (Barry et al., 1985; Jaffe & Berger, 1994); ad evaluation and recall (Whipple & Courtney, 1980); attitudes toward ads, company, and purchase intention (Ford & Latour, 1993); and preferences for particular ad types (Duker & Tucker, 1977). In light of this heterogeneity in the operationalization of concepts, a broad approach to measuring ad effectiveness is adopted here, following Beerli and Santana's (1999) recommendation for printed media.…”

An Exploratory Study of the Effect of Sex Role Stereotyping on Attitudes Toward Magazine Advertisements

“…Traditional sex role portrayals in advertising will become less appropriate as the actual role of women in society changes. Duker and Tucker (1977) showed female college students advertisements employing a range of female sex roles including mother, sex object, housewife, glamour girl, working mother, modem woman and professional.…”