Topic > Essay on Gender Roles in Advertising - 2223

Advertising has begun to move away from presenting men as strictly providers of the family. There have been advertisements showing “men portrayed as caring partners and even loving fathers – but the fact remains that men are rarely seen as responsible for tasks associated with daily home maintenance such as cooking, cleaning and shopping” (Amy -Chinn 3). Tsai further adds to this idea by stating that the ads show men having “less involvement with their children, and are predominantly shown playing with children, instead of being responsible for childcare duties” (Tsai 38). This causes society to shift from seeing men solely as workers and sex objects to seeing them as caring husbands, even though they still shouldn't be responsible for household chores as seen in commercials. Women continue to be seen as caretakers and in charge of household chores, but are now considered less traditional. In this sense, the power or dominance that male figures held in society became more dispersed because the gender roles of men and women became a little more mixed together. This contributes to the idea that how society views gender roles is determined by how advertisements portray them