Missing the mark? Gender and advertising in Southern Africa.

What on earth does the size I of a woman's bra have to do with smoking cigarettes? The question, posed by a woman in one of the focus group discussions in the recently released Gender Links study on gender and advertising in four Southern African countries, is one that could well be asked of many of the advertisements that flash around us each day.

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Covering 1650 radio, television, print and billboard advertisements in Mauritius, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the study aimed to establish how women and men are represented and portrayed in advertising. Monitoring took place over a two week period in December 2006, followed by separate male and female focus group discussions on selected case studies.

Playing with our minds

Unlike news content that must be impartial, considered and fair, advertisers have the licence to play with our minds by accentuating the bizarre; taking us on feel good trips; or lifting us out of our normal space: whatever it takes to catch our attention.

Precisely because of this power over the mind, advertising is a critical area of concern for transforming gender relations. The good news is that women are far more likely to be reflected in advertising than in news content. The bad news is that this is often for all the wrong reasons.

Overall, women constituted 41 percent of all subjects (those featuring in the adverts as voices and or images) in the advertising monitoring, compared to the Southern African average of 19 percent news sources in the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) of 2005 that provides latest data on women and men in the news.

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Using women's bodies

The higher proportion of women in advertisements than as news sources is, however, not a measure of greater gender sensitivity in this area of media practice, but a reflection of the fact that advertising still relies heavily on women's physical attributes as a marketing ploy. A case in point is the woman wearing a Cup D bra in a cigarette advertisement in Zimbabwe where there is no relationship at all between the woman and the product being advertised.

If advertisements that are regarded as gender neutral are excluded (for example a cell phone with no person in the advertisement) 62 percent of the items monitored were classified as either gender blind (regarding women as non-existent) or displaying blatant or subtle stereotypes, with only 38 percent of advertisements classified as "gender aware".

Being gender blind

Gender blindness is apparent in such areas as sports advertising which has a heavy male bias even though women often constitute a high proportion of the spectators at such events. Advertisers during the soccer World Cup found that they had sold themselves short when most of the advertising during this event watched by billions across the globe targeted men, despite the fact that women in fact constituted 40 percent of those watching the spectacle!

One of the ways in which gender stereotypes are reinforced in advertising is the fact that women are far more likely to feature as images than as voices in advertisements. In the study, women comprised 54 percent of subjects in billboard followed by 51 percent of the subjects in print advertisements. In contrast, they comprised 42 percent of TV and 35 percent of radio advertisement subjects.

Reinforcing stereotypes

Billboards displayed the highest proportion of blatant stereotypes, often using women as mere objects to attract attention, with no relationship to the actual product (like a woman in a scanty top advertising air time or standing next to a car). The messages in billboards are often at best insensitive, at worst dangerous. A case in point is the billboard advert for women's underwear in South Africa, a country with one of the highest levels of gender violence in the world, with the caption, "undress for success."

While women dominated in still images, they constituted a mere 29 percent of all voice-overs. The clear message that emerges from this is that women in advertising are meant to be seen and not heard. This has the undertones of an old Victorian saying in reference to children. It should raise serious concerns as to how the agency of women continues to be denied into the 21st century.

Another way in which stereotypes are reinforced is in the different roles that women and men are portrayed in advertising. For example women constituted 82 percent of those classified as model/beauty contestant/sex object and 60 percent of home-makers. Men on the other hand dominated in business, sport, politics and other "serious" pursuits.

Household goods, food and cleaning materials are almost always associated with women, while financial services are typically associated with men. In all countries, and in a pattern similar to the news, women above the age of 36 are virtually non-existent in advertising. Almost all the older people in adverts are men.

The gender benders 

Despite these biases, the study identified an interesting array of advertisements classified as "gender aware". An interesting sector--and one of the fastest growing areas of advertising in all countries--is telecommunications. The sector seems to be cottoning onto the fact that to increase market share, you need to broaden your horizons. In Africa, where land lines in the rural areas are few and far between, it makes as much sense to appeal to "gogo" (granny) in the rural areas as to the trendy young man in town if you are going to grow your cell phone network. And it certainly makes sense to consciously appeal to women and men!

In the focus groups, a surprising number of men, young and old, said they would like to see men in more diverse roles, such as cooking and caring for the family. Women and men warmed to the increasing examples of "gender benders" in advertising. Could it be that by harping on tired old stereotypes, advertisers are losing out on potential new markets? Come on advertisers, how about really surprising us!

Colleen Lowe Morna is Executive Director of Gender Links. This article is part of the GL Opinion and Commentary Service that offers fresh views on every-day news.