Women Indoors



Over the last 4 decades, in various cultural contexts, content analyses of ads have consistently demonstrated that women tend to be depicted:

  • inside the home, more often than outside

  • as compared to men, more often indoors, and

  • when outdoors, as compared to men, much less active

In Japanese ads, although women are often depicted outside, their most likely venue is inside

and if not inside, then very close to the home
Moreover, for Japanese women in commercials, the activities that they engage in while inside are most frequently:

cleaning, cooking, attending to children, spouses and elders

such activities are less often practiced by men (in the less frequent cases where men are placed indoors)
In fact, the easiest way to see these pre-conceived, hegemonic, commercial-mediated and sanctioned differences between male and female is to compare commercials in which men and women both appear

This can be:

  • Either in the case of one ad in which men and women are depicted, or else

  • in different versions of an ad for the same product, one adopting a male protagonist and the other a female protagonist

In the case of the former, consider this ad, for beer:
In which the female protagonist (though her occupation is listed as "model") is seen merrily baking in her kitchen, while the male (listed as an actor) is out doors flying his model plane
In the case of coincidental campaigns, consider this ad, for beer:
As for the man, he sits home alone, drinking his beer and pumping his fist as he watches the baseball game. As he drinks he thinks back to the stressful part of his day when he scurried up to his boss and apologized for some unspecified wrong For the woman, she sits on her veranda sipping beer in the light summer breeze. She smiles as she recalls a leisurely day in the park with her man
Opportunities to view such gendering, while not constant in advertising do, indeed crop up

When they appear, we can clearly see the degrees to which "male" and "female" are differentially mediated in Japan



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