Annihilating or perpetuating the gender stereotype? An analysis of Indian television advertisements

Abstract

Critiquing character projections of women in Indian advertising has been one of the major areas of the content focus for research analysts in the domain of marketing and consumer behavior. Often these criticisms demonstrate the concerns that feminists have vociferously expressed regarding the flawed presentations of gender equations. Though there has been some revolutionary revamping of image attempted by some creative advertisers, it has been posited by many critics that little change has affected gender representations in advertising over decades. The authors in the present paper examine the construction of gender roles in two recent Indian television commercials that depict Indian woman essaying supervisory roles in their corporate jobs. The study uses qualitative analysis through in-depth interviews of young corporate women. The purpose is to find out whether these advertisements really act as harbingers of mutation in gender discourse or reinforce the same archetypal gender roles under the garb of liberatory postmodernist feminist mediations. © Indian Institute of Management Calcutta 2017.