Current American perspectives on women in advertisements: An ideal point approach

In recent years a great deal of discussion has been generated in the literature concerning the portrayal of women in advertisements. Lundstorm and Sciglimpaglia have indicated that the portrayal of women in advertisements is a real problem. Furthermore, they point out that the most critical group seems to be the younger, better educated, upper status women who have rejected the values and stereotypes of the more traditional role of women's place in the society(2). Other researchers have the opinion that some leading marketers and advertisers are still treating women as though they are back in colonial times. But in recent years discriminating viewers can see subtle differences in the manner in which women are portrayed in advertisements. The rapid changes in the gender roles, influx of women into managerial positions, and the women's movement seem to have an impact on the nature of images of women that are projected through commercial messages.

The focus of this paper is to explore the current perception in the United States concerning the portrayal of women in advertisements using a comparative approach. Specifically, the researchers intent to utilize the ideal point model to explore the nature of images of women as seen through commercial messages and compare that to the notion of ideal portrayal of women. A bi-polar scaling technique with fifteen elements was developed for this purpose with the intention of capturing these two relevant images. In essence, the objective of the researchers is to define these images as vectors with fifteen elements and then examine these vectors to identify significant differences between the image of women in advertisements and the ideal portrayal of women in advertisements. An integrated research instrument was created and tested for validity and reliability. The final form of the research instrument was administered to respondents in the United States. Preliminary statistical analysis seems to indicate that the ideal image of women as perceived currently by the American respondents in this study is very different from the image of women projected through commercial messages. The mean ratings on many of the vector dimensions are greater for the ideal woman when compared to the images of women in advertisements. The final paper will include the details of the statistical analysis, interpretation of all significant results, conclusions and implications.