‘Holding up half of the sky’? A sociocultural comparison of gender-role portrayals in Chinese and US advertising

Abstract

Considering advertising as a social actor and cultural artefact, this article analyses the gender roles portrayed in a total of 667 Chinese and US television commercials from 1996. Results show that advertising in both countries portrayed more men in occupational roles and more women in non-occupational ones, and depicted more men in recreational activities and more women in decorative situations. Chinese television advertising was found to reinforce even more stereotypes than its US counterpart. Male models, for example, played relaxing roles more open but family roles less often in Chinese commercials. Other major differences involved the styles of dress worn by female models and the number of models portrayed, which were found to be consistently related to the sociocultural influences in the two countries. Gender-role portrayals were also found to have much to do with the product categories advertised.