Economics of Portraying Women in Media: Reinforcing Stereotype Role of Women in Advertisements in India

Abstract

Media has been crucial to development of economic, political, social, and cultural spheres at the local, national, and global levels. Media through different means has remained not only the source of information and entertainment but it has been able to produce and disseminate information, ideas, beliefs, values, ways of thinking, and narratives which can help us to understand and follow the socio-cultural happenings around the world. In India, television along with internet has become the main source of social media. In fact, television is the most powerful source of social media which covers both urban areas and rural areas. Approximately 47.2 per cent of population in India has access to television. Many researchers are of the opinion that television advertisements present idealized images of appropriate behavior and role for women, making television advertisement an important factor that shapes desired and appropriate behaviors and roles of each sex in developing nations. Some studies mention that changing portrayal of women in advertisements has been the result of increased number of educated women working outside the home. In contrast, entrepreneurs recognize that consumption is related to the creation and production of sense of self. The greater is an association with the sense of self, the greater will be the capacity to buy products for consumption. This paper posits that media, and especially television programs, promote images that appeal to traditional gender role to support economic enterprise of sale of traditional women’s apparel.

Citation

Singh, J. (2015), "Economics of Portraying Women in Media: Reinforcing Stereotype Role of Women in Advertisements in India", Enabling Gender Equality: Future Generations of the Global World (Research in Political Sociology, Vol. 23), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 171-178. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0895-993520150000023012