Men and women are different. It was designed by nature like this and there is nothing wrong about it as they perfectly supplement each other. There are stable images of men and women roles in the society, which are very difficult to change or overcome. Men are usually regarded as strong and resolute, clever and quick. Female roles are reduced to pretty and sexy objects. Advertising not only reflects the situation on the world market, but also the tendencies of the modern society and thing, which are in requisition. Gender plays in important role in advertising and gender stereotypes very often define the advertising style.

Men generally carry more important social roles, with very few exceptions, and this is reflected in the advertisements. Men play roles of authorities in the advertisements who either give examples of express their professional opinion in the contrast to women, who mainly play submissive roles of users of the products.

Advertisement can be called a measure of social opinion as it expresses the needs of the society but at the same time it also forms it. It plays a vital role in promoting labels and stereotypes. Certain ads are targeted to certain social groups. Ads, which display different female characters, appeal to different social groups.

In my paper I would like to study different approaches to woman in advertising, such as treating women as sex object, housewife, submissive, mother, professional, dumb blonde, in order to analyse social position of women and their perspectives.

Lets focus on each type of advertisements in order to study the social role it gives to women.

Women in advertising

First, and most traditional category of advertisements depicts women as typical housewife, fulfilling the major gender stereotype of the mankind. These characters radiate sweetness, warm-heartedness and passion to house holding. For example, the advertisement of commercially laundry "Bryza", underlines the laundry to be totally women occupation. In the advertisement man is singing about children and stains and then addresses women with the words "Now You have Bryza". Such an attitude implies that only women can and must be interested in laundry and other issued connected with house holding. Another bright example of such an attitude is an ad of Virginia Slims. This advertisement states "The sexiest move that a guy can make [in the house] is cleaning up." Such an attitude presupposes that cleaning is fully women’s occupation and men, who help their women about the house, are doing the heroic deed and should be treated as heroes. Examples are multiple and we can calculate up to a dozen of advertisement, where women act as typical housewives during one commercial block. Such an attitude humiliates female dignity and strengthens social stereotype about the woman as a housewife. There is nothing bad in being a good housewife or taking care about husband and children. It’s bad when all the life is artificially and intentionally centred all around this aspect. Volunatry or not, but with the help of these ads socials role of the woman is reduced to the role of typical housewife.

The role of submissive mother originally arises from the role of housewife. Motherhood is one of main destinations of all women. We all know about this from the childhood. Unfortunately, fatherhood isn’t considered to be one of the main social roles of the man. Rising children is considered to be mainly female prerogative. Such an attitude is reflected in the advertisements, where all children are accompanied by their caring and submissive mothers. These are mothers, who make the children ready to school, cook them breakfast, take care about their health, appearance, toys, etc. The chances to see a man in the role of loving father is very small or equals zero. These stereotypes about the role of woman as submissive mother are reflected in ad of Chewi-Quaker. Small girl is worried about new surrounding after moving to another school, but becomes popular when finds Chewis and messages from her loving mother in her lunch box. Another very bright example is a Cheetos advertisement, where the mother of four children is driving a family van around the city. These are typical ad when loving and caring mother helps her kids. It’s hard for us to imagine any man on the place of the woman in the ads about children. These ads are light and touching, but they serve a bad service persuading the society that taking care about the children is fully feminine responsibility. The social role of woman is changed nowadays and the range of her responsibilities goes much further than housework or raising children. In many families women work on a par with men or even more, but old social stereotypes are still alive and still give the perverted idea about the female role in the society.

A dumb blonde is another category female represent in the ad industry. Dumb blonde is a common stereotype, applied for the attractive woman with blond hair and with limited mental abilities and simple view on life. There is a common category of jokes, which are based on the dumb- blonde stereotype. This category is widely used by the advertisers as it creates a successful combination of silly but beautiful woman. This way they get a perfect opportunity to show a woman as a sexual object, spicing it with humore and male superiority at the same time. For example, in Architect, Builder, Contractor & Developer magazine the advert for window equipment "Fenestrator" depicted a blonde woman, wearing lingerie and the following text "Makes opening sash windows a breeze for the elderly, the disabled and the blonde." Devon, Dorset, a woman who worked in the construction industry tried to complaine about the ad content, but her complained wasn’t upheld, as the Authority noted that the advertisers " intended the advertisement to be humorous. It considered that the advertisement was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence to the readers of Architect, Builder, Contractor & Developer magazine".

What is interesting, there is no such a category for men. Statistics states, that intellectual level of men and women is equal. It also states that women with blonde hair are not sillier than other men or women. This stereotype is only a convenient tool for man to show their false superiority

Most numerous for today category of advertisements is a category, which includes sexually directed ads. If we try to analyse the modern advertisements, we will notice that ads of such a subject-matter constitute more than a half of all ads taken together. This kind of advertisement attracts attention by showing nudity, sexual attractiveness, making its participants the sexual objects. Such commercials are designed to make the customers believe, that using the good advertised, they will become more attractive to the opposite sex. It’s hard to find companies, which don’t use females as sexual objects in their advertisement companies. The latest ad of Miller Lite is a very vivid example. In this ad a beer, which is considered to be mainly male product is advertised by two model-looking girls who start fighting for the bottle and finally finish their catfight almost completely nude. It’s a typical ad depicting women as a sexual object in order to advertise good for men. In this case a woman becomes nothing but a sexual object, a pleasant addition to the thing advertised, which can be used and thrown away. I think there is no need to say that such an approach doesn’t add respect to women.. These types of ads have one more negative impact, along with reducing the role of the women to sexual object, designed to correspond the needs of men. In addition, beautiful models which surround us in advertisements create a perverted ideal of beauty in other woman, whose looks is "average" and brings a serious damage to their self-esteem.

New tendencies in the society are realised in the ads, which stress on the professional and intellectual qualities of women, depicting them as valuable members of the society. Kenko ad is a very bright example of such an attitude. In this ad woman is checking up the quality of coffee beans and wants to buy them. Mail shop assistant says to her "I'd better o.k it with the boss", pointing to the man, accompanying her. "You just did" woman replays assuming she is the boss. But even in this ad superficial attitude to the women and their business abilities is expressed through the words of shop assistant. Such ads reflect the tendencies of modern society to equality between men and women and stress on the ability to women to occupy high positions and take important decisions. Unfortunately, these ads are not so widespread as other four categories, mentioned above, as the society and its patriarchal basement are very slow to change and to adopt the ideas of feminine equality.

Conclusion

Traditionally the role of women in media was reduced to the role of housewife. And such categories as submissive mother or dumb blonde only expand the role of housewife. These advertisement characters are fully centred on their houses, know nothing but cooking, cleaning and watching children. This category is completely asexual and represents the passive social role of women created through the history of mankind. Later sexual revolution and some other factors have added new role to women in advertisement. Advertisers realised that using women as sexual object can help them to sell anything. Very quickly the profitability of this method became evident and advertisements with sexual pretexts occupied major part of the advertisement techniques. The last category of ads, which depict women as professionals appeared only recently. This new tendency proves the fact that women are tired of their passive role of housewives and sexual objects and want to take active role in the society and have equal rights with men. These type of advertisements describes women as good professionals, centre on their working statues and qualification. Men make their way to women very unwillingly, but the changes in the society and in the mentality of people have now occurred and advertisement industry can’t neglect them any more.

Advertisement is a most powerful influential medium in modern society and ideals and stereotypes it expresses have a very important influence on the society. At the same time demand conditions supply and the ideals, which exists in the advertising business today, reflect the social demand for them. This way ads, which portray woman in negative perspective and decrease their social position become an obstacle for future social progress an development. Only harmonic society, where both – man and woman are equally appreciated can give the opportunities for growth and development.