The Effects of Magazine Advertising on The Perceived Abilities of Women in Leadership Positions

1
The Effects of Magazine Advertising on The
Perceived Abilities of Women in Leadership
Positions

• Jennifer George
• Michelle Uhlenbrock

2
Media Advertisement

• Media advertising relies on and reinforces
  stereotypes of women
• Evident in TV advertising, magazines
• Gendered Advertisements (Goffman, 1976)
• How women and men are portrayed in print
  advertisements
• Six visual cues for power that tend to be in
  favor of male dominance

3
Media Advertisement (cont.)

• High fashion magazines often portray women in
  negative light
• Submissive
• Powerless
• Objectified/sexualized
• Childlike
• Not all magazine advertisements portray women in
  negative light
• Powerful women are present in ads, but scarce

4
(No Transcript)
5
Past Studies of Magazine Advertisements

• Rudman and Borgida (1995)
• Sexist vs. non-sexist ads
• Women in sexist ads rated as less intelligent,
  less powerful, and less autonomous
• Findings
• Exposure to sexist ads increased the occurrence
  of thoughts about women as objects

6
What About Women?

• TV Commercials as Achievement Scripts for Women
  (Geis, Brown, Jennings Porter, 1984)
• Women who viewed sex-stereotyped commercials were
  more likely to deemphasize achievement and
  emphasize homemaking

7
Stereotyping

• How Gender Stereotypes Prevent Womens Ascent Up
  the Organizational Ladder (Heilman, 2001)
• There is a scarcity of women in upper level
  positions
• Gender stereotypes and the expectations they
  produce can have negative effects on women in the
  workplace

8
Research Question

• We are interested in studying how magazine
  advertisements (specifically womens fashion and
  beauty magazines) affect perceptions of women in
  leadership positions

9
Methods

• Materials
• Magazine advertisements from high fashion and
  beauty magazines
• Cosmo, Vogue, InStyle, Glamour, and Womens
  Health

10
(No Transcript)
11
Materials (cont.)

• Types of Ads
• Negative categories
• Artificial
• doll-like, mannequin, unreal, puppet
• Sexualized
• Heroin chic
• Neutral category
• Athletic category
• Blurred product information to prevent
  associations with products

12
Artificial Advertisements
13
Sexualized Advertisements
14
Heroin Chic Advertisements
15
Neutral Advertisements
16
Athletic Advertisements
17
Gender Authority Measure Questionnaire

• Rudman and Kilianski (2000)
• Series of statements that evaluate peoples
  preferences for men and women in leadership
  positions
• Rated on a 1-5 Likert scale
• Our study 1-6 scale
• Example If I were in serious legal trouble, I
  would prefer a male to a female lawyer.

18
Hypothesis

• We expect to find that both men and women who
  view the negative categories of ads, will score
  higher on the GAM, than those participants who
  viewed neutral or athletic ads.
• Scoring higher greater preference for men than
  for women in high-status jobs

19
What we expected to find
GAM
20
Participants Procedure

• 272 participants
• 48 males
• 220 females
• 4 chose not to respond
• Ages 18 62
• Average 25
• Online study
• Informed consent and random assignment to 5
  different levels of the IV

21
Procedure (cont.)

• First set of GAM questions answered
• GAM split into pre and post measure to increase
  statistical power
• 9 questions each
• 10 advertisements from a single category
• Brief response given to each ad
• Use three words to describe this ad.
• Second set of GAM questions
• Demographic questions
• Debriefing form

22
What We Expected to Find
GAM
23
Time vs. Condition
F(4,259) 1.786, p 0.132
GAM
a 0.853
a 0.7
24
Discussion

• We concluded that short term effects of
  advertisements on peoples perceptions of women
  in leadership positions were mild and perhaps
  non-existent
• We are still concerned about the long term
  effects and effects on other attitudes

25
Limitations

• Procedure
• Limited number of ads.
• Shown for a short period of time
• Conditions
• Some ads could have easily fit into more than one
  category
• Could have used more pure ads

26
Connections to Past Research

• Geis, Brown, Jennings and Porter (1984)
• Had significant results why?
• Participants wrote essays about how they imagine
  their lives and concerns 10 years from now,
  allowed for flexibility
• Used TV ads which vividly depict life as opposed
  to still photography

27
Future Directions

• Repeat research as a longitudinal study
• Use different methods of measuring attitudes
• Measuring different attitudes
• Stricter rules for ad selection and
  categorization
• Different types of media
• Television, commercials, music, etc.

28
Conclusion

• Reasons to be concerned
• These magazines reach over 9,000,000 women a year
• Ways women are being portrayed is negative

29
Questions?