The artistic role of women in television advertising (a comparative study between Jordan and Egypt)

Abstract

Advertisement is one of the major media that affect our daily life consciously and unconsciously. It is also responsible to play a significant role in shaping the society in a much broader perspective. There is a lot of dispute on the issue that whether advertisements depict what is prevalent in the society or the society embraces in itself what is portrayed in the advertisements and other media. Over the last few decades, there has been a great socio-cultural change in the society especially in the context of role and position of women in the society. There are increasing numbers of women pursuing careers of their choice, changing role in the family structure, negative attitude towards sex-role stereotypes etc.  But has the representation of women in advertisements changed over a period of time? Or does it still confirm to some traditional notions about women and their role in the society? Such stereotypes projected about women go a  long  way  in  deciding  what  the  society  thinks  about  women  and  how  the  society  treats  women  in  the  long  run. The  present  paper  is an  attempt  to study  the  different  projections  of women  roles  in  various print  and  audio-video advertisements in India and how does it define the social acceptance of women in the society and the treatment they are met with. However, the depiction of women as sex symbols, objects of desire, and as having subservient behaviors has presented a great concern to feminist scholars, activists, and researchers. The objective of this research paper is to study how women’s role portrayal impacts consumers’ willingness to buy and to identify the difference in views of Indian men and women when it comes to the stereotypical role portrayal of women in advertisements. The study uses MANOVA statistics to identify whether significant differences exist between the men and women when it comes to willingness to buy. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis are used to identify the latent variables. The impact on purchase intent is determined by validating the proposed hypotheses through structural educational modeling statistics.