Gender Representation and Beliefs About Gender: Evidence from the Universe of U.S. TV Ads
Abstract: Advertising reflects and shapes culturally shared beliefs about gender, yet systematic evidence on gender portrayals in advertising and their relationship with consumers' own gender identities remains limited. Using the universe of TV ads aired in the United States between 2010 and 2020, this paper provides the first large-scale descriptive analysis of gender representation across products and brands.
The analysis complements gender presence with a scalable, belief-based measure of gender-typing in advertising. Four key findings emerge: gender presence is broadly balanced, but portrayals remain strongly gender-typed, especially for men; representation is highly segmented across products, with men confined to male-typical depictions; this segmentation mirrors product-gender associations even without salient gender presence; and male-typical portrayals persist across both male-and female-dominated audiences. Linking advertising content to data on actual and perceived gender gaps in product consumption reveals that gender-typical representation aligns more closely with inaccurate beliefs about consumers' gender than with their actual gender. The results further evidence substantial heterogeneity across brands unexplained by the gender composition of their consumers, including systematic differences by founders' gender. These findings highlight the importance of studying representation beyond mere presence and motivate further research on the economic and societal consequences of inaccurate representation in advertising.
