The study of gender images in advertisements originated in the United States,expanded to Europe,Asia,and even the world and gradually flourished and developed.In the perspective of China,there are also gender stereotypes in advertisements similar to those in the West,and the research of domestic scholars are influenced by the way of Western research.In order to analyze academic research results,summarize progress and point out the direction of innovation,It is necessary to make a literature review in this field.However,the current reviews about gender and advertisements has some deviation on time,literature selection,research methods and research topics,some of which compares the research results with a unified standard and can’t cover the whole picture.In addition,a very small number of cited papers related to China,but the reviewers’ literature sources and commentaries exclude research of China.The gender image in the advertisement is deeply influenced by the local culture.In order to better understand and observe the local,the academic vision of the West and the country is indispensable.The comparative study of gender images issues in Chinese and international advertising finds that foreign research mostly use quantitative content analysis,while domestic literature mostly use qualitative analysis.In terms of research topics,both of Chinese and international research cover three topics of gender stereotypes,including the reason,presentation,and effects of them.Research about the presentation of gender images are the most in China and abroad,and research on the image of men have been expanded.In terms of causes,It is the factors of politics,economics,cultures from the macro-level and advertising practitioners,regulators from the micro-level that have made gender stereotypes different in advertisements.Cultural factors are the focus of foreign research in the past decade,which are controversy in the result.However,the latest research shows that the cultural dimensions of masculinity and the country’s gender index are not sufficient to explain the differences in the gender image of advertising between countries.In the representation of gender stereotype,there are typical stereotypes of women in both Chinese and foreign advertisements:voice-over for men,young women,women as home-maker,and non-professional role.The ratio of the number of men and women and the category of products are not uniform.With the passage of time,gender stereotypes in advertisements have generally lighten,and female image has made breakthroughs.However,it still lags behind society.Men tend to be sexy,feminine in advertisement,and the role of family increase,reflecting the improvement of equality between men and women.It is also influenced by the trend of global commercialization.Judging from the cross-cultural comparison of women’s images,in addition to voice-overs,female stereotypes on scenes and roles are lighter than most of Asian,European and American countries.Particularly on occupation,Chinese women are more likely to be staff members and are more likely to be at work.similar to America.However,there are few roles as senior managers.Women in the eastern countries are less nude and sexually attractive,and are less often portrayed as occupational roles except China.However,due to the differences between the eastern and western cultures,the absolute number of nakedness and roles cannot fully represent the degree of stereotype.Regardless of race,women are generally more stereotyped than men.Whites are over-represented in both East and West advertising,who have certain stereotypes.Asians are less or even missing in domestic and foreign advertising.In terms of advertising effectiveness,non-stereotyped advertising can generally reduce the audience’s prejudices and promote positive social transformation.The implicit effect is obvious,so consumers with a high tendency to stereotype gender roles are positive about the stereotypical gender role advertising that meets expectations,and vice versa.The sexy and sexually female image does not have a big negative impact on the audience as we thought. |