1.

0 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Advertisement can be traced to the ancient civilization. Various forms of advertising have been around
for thousands of years. The Egyptians used papyrus [

to advertise goods and services. In ancient Rome and other parts of the ancient world, mosaics pictures
or signs on walls were used by businesses to advertise their wares. The Greece however, advertise
product and services through town criers. At the beginning of the 17 th century, printed advertising was
very common and was written by the merchant himself. La Gazette, the first French newspaper
established by Theophraste Renaudo in 1631 contained personal adverts for those seeking and offering
employments, buying and selling goods and services and announcements of all kinds.(Raya
2011).Advertising is the means of informing as well as influencing the general public to buy a product or
service through visual or oral messages. A product or service is advertised to create awareness in the
minds of potential buyers through various advertising medium such as newspapers, magazines,
television ,radio, posters, billboards and more recently through the internet and the web.
(Daymette,2017). The choice of many of these media depends greatly on the number of factors among
which are the kind of customers the advertiser intend to research.

Gender as we all know play an important part in advertising. Ghanaians have shown all kinds of adverts

on daily bases, all in an attempt to establish the role of one gender in relation to the other and some

scholars argue that advertisers are obsessed with gender. Advertisers focus on gender

relationships ,because people define themselves by gender, and can be “communicated at a glance,

making it easy for advertisers to use their themes in their work. Both male, female and even children

are feature in advertisements and all these individuals have a role they play. Previous scholars have

made quantitative studies on gender and language. It is said by many scholars that men and women

differ in usage of language(Smith1985,Tennen 1990).The question is whether it gives a reason for

advertisers to use different languages in advertisements for female customers and male customers

separately. It is a largely held view that advertising greatly influences society’s opinion of what the

appropriate sex roles and responsibilities are or should be. It is therefore necessary to carefully analyze

the content of adverts in relations to how males and females are portrayed in adverts. Ghanaians are

showered with so many adverts on a daily basis through television, radio, newspaper, billboards and so

on, all in an attempt to draw attention to or describe favorably goods and services to sell, promote,

patronage or just to create awareness. Both males and females are featured in adverts but the type of
product or service and intended message usually determine who plays what roles. There is therefore a

growing concern about the role women play in adverts in general. This is because females are ascribe

narrowly defined roles, which only reinforce the idea that, these roles are appropriate, ideal, and even

natural. Women are dominantly found in adverts on personal hygiene products, or are being used for

products meant for bathrooms and kitchens. On the Ghanaian advertising scene, women normally play

the role of domestic housewives who do all the cooking, cleaning and care giving often without any

support from the male partner. With this, advertising is prescribing the role of a woman as being very

much as a family home -oriented one, doing domestic chores or even worse serving as a sex or

decorated piece. In contrast, men are often portrayed as strong, smart, professionals, leaders and

decision makers who are solely responsible for paying all bills at home. In this same ads, women are

sometimes portrayed as dumbs and unintelligent because they usually do not have the slightest idea

what………. The issue of portraying women as sex objects in ads needs to be discussed. This is important

because the ads only reinforce the idea of women being worth nothing beyond their physical looks.

[Dinah Kpodo, modern Ghana,Com/news]. Looking at the important roles the advertisement have on

the general public, it is important that they include the advancement in women roles in adverts. Women

now play roles in politics, education and other great sectors. Also men should be seen in ads helping

women in the kitchen and in caring for the children. But do we see men doing such things in adverts?
1.1 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Advertisements uses simple message to send information to viewers in order for them to patronize a

product or service. In so doing, some gender stereotypes have been employed and these have been

argued as having the potential to affect perceptions on the role of men and women in the society

[Hovland et al,2005]. The representation of women in ads have been described as predominantly

unrealistic, unbalanced and limited in not taking into consideration the diverse role women play in

society [Addy 2006]. The portrayal of women in advertising sometime show the level of submissiveness

and powerlessness. This can be clearly seen when women are shown lying on the floor as men are

standing over them. A recent study found that consumers view an average of 247 advertisements each

day. Although it is beneficial for a company’s revenues sales, there are some side effects attached to

this crucial element of market which is advertisement. This study will seek to find how gender is

portrayed in advertisements.
1.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

a) How are male and female portrayed in TV ads?

b) What gender message do adverts carry to the audience?

c) What gender responsibilities are ascribe in the adverts?

 1.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

Gender roles in advertisement is one of the topics with more than five decades. The purpose of the

current study is to bridge the gap between those linked gender roles in advertising and consumers’

reaction to these ads. The effect of specified audience characteristics on gender roles in advertisements

portraying women will be examined. Also, the personality and attitude of the viewer are believed to be

salient diagnostic audience characteristics to be investigated. It also serves as a platform of viewer’s

attitude towards the role of women in society which is also investigated as an explanatory valuable

elicting an evaluative reaction to traditional versus non- traditional role portrayals in promotional

campaigns. The study tries to answer the question of whether gender stereotyping in advertising have

changed over the years and also provides a meta-analytics of the research on gender roles in advertising

on tv commercials. The research would also serve as a learning ground for the average audience to

know that media depiction is not reality like they are seen. The researched would also depict men play

domestic roles doing chores whereas women would be presented in independent roles. This would help

to break our expectation and society norms that revolve around the gender role.

1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY.

The main focus of this project is to analyze how male and female are portrayed in adverts. The effect of

such perception on individual or the viewer. This research would however use three products

advertisements on the Ghanaian television namely; VODAFONE[2CEDIS OFFER], ADONKO BITTERS and
SOFT CARE SANITARY PAD. The choice of such as is because they portray some element of gender roles.

Therefore this would help use to ethically analyze how male and female are portrayed. In the above

mentioned television advertisement male are depicted superior than women and women have been

reduce to domestic workers and items for trade.

1.5 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

As a result of time and financial constraints, the researcher focuses on VODAFONE[2 CEDIS

OFFER], ADONKO BITTERS AND SOFT CAERE SANITARY PAD which run on United Television[UTV]. The

researcher pose Utv for its consumer expectations through effective communications and also to

compare the roles given to male and female in these advertisements.

1.6 DELIMITATION

The study is focused only on the above mentioned ads or product since most of such ads take

the forms of episode, so we will use only the first half of 2019 ads. Therefore the research is based on

the contents of these ads. The researcher is thus not responsible for issues found in other television

commercial in Ghanaian media, electronic or print.

1.7 ORGANIZATION OF THE RESERACH

 The study is to examined gender roles in advertisement and the formation of attitudes and

perception in audience. The research would be in five chapters. The first chapter conclude the general

background to the study, research question, statement of the problem, the significance of the study and

limitation and delimitation. Chapter two is the review of relevance materials concerning the topic. It will

be in two parts, that is; the theoretical framework and empirical reviews. Chapter three includes also,

the methodology employed for the study, sampling and sampling procedures, research instrument, data

collection and data source. Chapter four will present the finding of the study and discussion using

content and analysis. Finally, chapter five would be the summary of the entire study, conclusion and

recommendation of the study.

CHAPTER [2]

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 INTRODUCTION

The previous chapter provided background to the study, the research question, the
statement of the problem, the significance of the study and how the research was organized. This
chapter with talk about literature reviews. Rele…………………………………….

2.1 LITERATURE REVIEW

Empirical Perspective

As part of the work will review articles related to the topic. Advertising plays an
important role in its context and project of consumption. Television ads usually have a lot of influence
on individuals. Adverts mostly are done by both male and females. Female are projected as wife
materials, always taking care of the home whereas male are seen as people deep feet to work in white
colored jobs. Published literature, discussions indicates that there is a significant increase in
advertisements in recent times. The commonly made observations are that women are portrayed as
glamour objects, they are shown as dependent on men, are shown in traditional mundane roles as
housewife, teachers, nurse and mothers. They are rarely shown as decision markers or in position of
power or