Local News in Brief : Irvine : UCI Study Finds Ads in Australia Less Sexist
Television advertisers in Australia are less sexist than those in the United States, according to research by a UC Irvine professor.
Mary Gilly, assistant professor of administration, reported her findings in a study entitled “Sex Roles in Advertising: A Comparison of Television Advertisements in Australia, Mexico and the United States.”
The study, paid for by a UCI Faculty Career Development Award, will appear in the April issue of the Journal of Marketing. Research includes a detailed content analysis of 617 TV commercials from three countries.
Gilly said Mexican TV commercials tended to show women more often in subordinate roles, such as women not having jobs or not being experts on products.
“What was surprising is that the U.S. commercials contained almost as many stereotypes as the Mexican commercials, in spite of our country’s more liberated real-life sex roles,” Gilly said.
She said Australia’s depiction of more equal sex roles in TV commercials may be related to public protests in that country against “stereotyping” images of men and women.
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