Stereotypical Representation of Women: A Case Study of Nigerian Television Advertisements

The consistent representation of women in the media has received a huge amount of responses and has been an area of study for many researchers. Amongst other forms of media, television advertisement has been regarded as the most effective form of communication in the capitalist marketing industry. Advertisers have been found to spend so much money on researches related to gender and sex, because it enables good market segmentation. However, the advertisement industry has been blamed for prevalent stereotypes that exist in our society especially because these stereotypes reinforce gender inequality and subordination where women belong to a marginalized group. The aim of this research is to contribute to existing researches done in creating an understanding of the prevailing stereotypes in television advertising and to create an awareness of how gender is represented in Nigerian television advertisements, using 40 television commercials randomly chosen form 3 different Nigerian broadcast stations namely NTA, AIT and STV. This research is important because it serves as a form of media literacy especially because the research employs cultivation theory to explain how media cultivates us and influences our identity. The study also urges potential and prospective advertisers to practice advertising more ethically and also provide substantial evidence to audiences and consumers so as to be more critical and aware of the effect of TV on our values, beliefs and ideas. This research was carried out in order to reveal the consistency in how women are portrayed by the kinds of roles women play in Nigerian television advertisements. The researcher used content analysis to achieve this because it is a suitable method used to analyse texts especially media texts. Further, the researcher used survey method and distributes questionnaires to find out audience responses towards the stereotypical portrayal of women in Nigeria television advertisements. One major finding among others from this research is that the roles women play are limited based on the stereotypes that exists in the Nigerian culture. Hence, women play roles as the perfect house wife in other words, domesticated, i.e. as mothers, cooks, chid carers, and cleaners. Keywords: Television, TV, stereotypes, media, Nigerian, advertisement, gender, sex, representation, culture, society