The document summarizes a study on gender representation in television advertisements. It outlines the researcher's hypothesis that males would appear slightly more than females as main characters in ads. After analyzing 18 commercials across different time slots, the researcher found males constituted 62% of main characters compared to 38% for females. This supported the initial hypothesis. The researcher suggests males are portrayed more as they are harder to target and need more persuading to make purchases.

1. Gender in Television
Advertisements
Whitney Pelletier
CMS 200
4/21/2012

2. Introduction
Reason for research: To find out television
advertisements are dominated by a certain
gender or if they are equally represented.
Questions: Do males or females appear more in
television advertisements as the main character,
or do they appear equally?
This is important to communication and media
studies because television is a huge medium for
both communication and media studies and
effects the way both men and women look at
advertising in television.

3. What’s Been Discovered Already:
• So far many studies have been done on gender in television
advertisements. Not many however have looked at the
ratio of women’s appearances to men's appearances in
television advertisements. Most of the studies that I found
had to do with each genders specific role that was
portrayed in those advertisements. What information I did
find suggested that men are more represented in television
advertisements than females. More information was found
on whether men appeared more than women on television
in general but I wanted to look more closely at
advertisements. A study that compared the most closely to
mine found that males outnumbered females 55.5% to
44.5% in television advertisement appearances.

4. How My Study Differs:
• What I wanted to add to the research that has
already been found is a focus on the ratio or men
to female in television advertisements and not
looking at television in general.
• Also I’d like to stay away from getting into the
roles that are played by the characters and just
focus on if and why one gender might be
dominant.
• One more thing I would add is my analysis as to
why one appears more than the other or why
they are equal.

5. What I Expect to Find
• After going on what little information I found on my
specific study I think I will find that men appear slightly
more than women in television advertisements.
• Most of the information I had found dealt with gender
in television in general and I would expect
advertisements to follow that same pattern therefore
expecting men to appear more than women in the
advertisements.
• My hypothesis: When looking at television
advertisements I expect to find that men appear
slightly more than women do as the “main character”
of the advertisement.

6. My Study
• I believe that the best method of inquiry for my study is to
do a content analysis of commercials airing at three
different times during the most gender neutral shows I can
find. I think this is the best method because it gives me
quantitative results and I can directly analyze those. Also it
is an unobtrusive, inexpensive, fairly quick way of collecting
my data.
• I plan to watch three commercial breaks, one on a Monday
night around 6:00PM for the Channel 8 News which I
believe is pretty gender neutral. The next commercial break
would be on Channel 8 as well on a Wednesday night
around 7:30PM at which time Jeopardy airs. The third
commercial break will be on a Friday night at 11:00PM
during the news on Channel 8 again.

7. Results
• Out of the three commercial breaks I views there
were a total of 18 commercials. Out of the 18
commercials 11 had main characters that were
male, and 7 had main characters that were
female. In some cases there weren’t people in
the commercials so I used the gender of the
narrator. In another case there were male and
female cartoon characters but it was still easy to
decipher the main characters gender. This left me
with the quantitative results of a 62% ratio of
males to 38% ratio of females.

8. Gender in Television Advertisements
Gender in TV Ads
Males
Females

9. My Findings
• What I found pretty did support my hypothesis
and my expectations.
• Also compared to what I had found previously on
gender in television, they were pretty much the
same, even though a lot of the numbers I found
in others research didn’t look at advisements
specifically there were a lot of similarities. I also
noticed that If I had recorded what roles were
being played in the commercials I would have
found a lot of similarities in those categories as
well.

10. Larger Implications
• What my findings mean is a lot more important than the actual numbers.
My theory is that men are portrayed more in advertisements because they
watch more television than women. Also I believe that men are harder
targets than women and have to be convinced more to go out and make a
purchase, where on the other hand women are more easily convinced. For
example: one of the commercials was a Ford Truck commercial. The male
in the commercial was made to look tough and powerful while all the
benefits of the Truck were being rattled off by a male voice. Most of the
women's commercials you could tell they didn’t have to try as hard. Men
need more persuading in advertisements than women. Another factor
that I believe plays into why men appear more in the advertisements is
because men are less likely to be sold on an item when I women is in the
commercial. Women can be sold on an item by other women and other
men. I think that has to do with women being taken less seriously in
society. An interesting follow up would be to do a study on why people
think men are portrayed more.

11. Works Cited
Hooper, Valerie. "Portrayals of Gender in TelevisionCommercialsnd the Effects on Achievet
Aspirations of Audiences." Thesis. University of New Hampshire, 2008. Portrayals of Gender
in TelevisionCommercialsnd the Effects on Achievet Aspirations of Audiences. Web. 20 Apr.
2012. <www.unh.edu/sociology/media/pdfs-journal2008/HooperEDITED.pdf>.
Hentges, Beth A., Robert A. Bartsch, and Jo A. Meier. "Gender Representation in Commercials as
a Funtion of Target Audience Age." Gender Representation in Commercials as a Funtion of
Target Audience Age. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, Feb. 2007. Web. 22 Apr. 2012.
<coms114.wikispaces.com/file/view/Gender+Representation+in+Commercials+as+a+functio
n+of+Target+Audience+Age/pdf>.