TV ads are still using 1950s gender stereotypes, even though they have zero clue who is actually buying the stuff they're selling.
March 27, 2026
Original Paper
Gender Representation and Beliefs About Gender: Evidence from the Universe of U.S. TV Ads
SSRN · 6472639
The Takeaway
A decade of U.S. TV ads shows that male-typical portrayals persist even for products used primarily by women. The data reveals that ad content aligns more closely with the 'inaccurate beliefs' and biases of brand founders and creators than with the actual purchasing data of the consumers they are trying to reach.
From the 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