Gender Stereotyping

How are gender stereotypes used most frequently when referring to household cleaning product advertisements today?

The use of gender stereotyping in advertisement has always been a controversial and present topic. In a fair amount of advertisements there is a clear showing of gender roles and stereotypes. For example in advertisements for automobiles you will either see a rich male or an overly sexual female. Even in the advertising of perfumes or colognes you will see some type of male and female interaction or a sexual figure, usually being the female. In these situations the idea of sex sales their products, but there is one case where a different kind of sex sales products. When it comes to the advertising of household cleaning products the genders of the characters sale the product.

According to some sources less than 15% of ads are directed specifically to women and less than 5% are intended just for men. The remaining 80% are targeted to everyone. Regardless of who the ad is targeted to most sources will tell you that females tend to view and react more to advertisements than men. So what better way to sell a product than to sell an image of what a stereotypical female or male should do. Most people would argue that gender stereotyping in these ads are always directed towards the females. This is not completely true. Both genders are portrayed in a certain way.

In the field of household cleaning products both genders are given stereotypes. But these stereotypes are portrayed in two different ways depending on who is viewing them. First we will discuss the stereotypes that are given to females through these advertisements.

In a recent advertisement of Mr. Clean's magic eraser the use of stereotyping is very evident. The commercial starts out by panning around a dirty kitchen after a family meal. Everybody leaves the room as the mom looks around at all of the mess. She then begins to clean with the product. She scrubs, wipes and rinses everything. By the end of the commercial there is a sense of this is what a typical day is like. The typical day of a female. Some may view this as the female being weak and being willing to wait on the family hand and foot. This is the stereotype of a women being a housewife.

Meanwhile in a recent ad for Bounty's Select a Size product commercial there is a completely different type of feel to the stereotype. In this commercial the mother is shown as a more powerful being. It makes her seem as though she is the head of the household because she keeps everything in order and running smoothly.

This image is also one that is given to the male figure in ads. In most ads the male is stereotyped as being the head of the household. He is supposed to be the bread winner who shouldn't have to do anything when they return home from a hard days work. This stereotype is the more positive view of the two. The other view stems