A ground breaking study on gender and advertising in Southern Africa, conducted by Gender Links, has revealed that while women are more likely to feature in advertising than in news content, they are more likely to be seen than heard. They predominate in billboards and still images and hardly feature in voice-overs; and it is in these still images that we see blatant stereotypes at their worst.Covering 1650 radio, television, print and billboard advertisements in Mauritius, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the study aimed to establish how women and men are represented and portrayed in advertising. Despite women constituting half of all consumers, they are often either ignored, or portrayed in ways that perpetuate blatant and more subtle forms of stereotypes. Click here to view the research
