Ever wondered how marketing perpetuates gender stereotypes? A clear shortcoming of excluding dads from marketing is how it diminishes his ability as a capable consumer.
Of course, moms possess no more instinctual ability to purchase items than dads, who are fully fit shoppers. The current message and stigma about dads, however, has trained us to think otherwise. It’s that same messaging that influences moms while they shop on their own. It’s curious to contemplate that while some people believe everything outside the home is a man’s world, the marketing community firmly believes otherwise when constructing messages in relation to everything inside the home.
With all of the emotion, empowerment, and authenticity of advertising directed toward mothers, how constructive are advertisements that speak only to them?
In other words, is society really taking mothers seriously when all the focus is placed on them to the exclusion of fathers? Do mothers really want this heap of responsibility when scores of moms incessantly plead for help in the home and caring for children? Do mothers really want it all, as ads so often suggest: motherhood, career, and control of the household and family? Is it fair to portray women solely as happy homemakers in half of the ads and as sex objects in the other half?
Viewed collectively, these ads seem to be at odds with how women are regarded in society and inadvertently places unwanted labels on them.
The subjective conception of such marketing means that women pay a price beyond labels and undesirable pressure.
Humanity will never achieve overall equality for women, particularly at work, until the same equality for men is achieved as parents. The two are intertwined.
When gender stereotypes unfairly discount men as true parents and view women as instinctual caretakers of children, it conveys a message that it’s a man’s world everywhere but home. And that's why it's important to know how marketing perpetuates gender stereotypes.