Blog 6: Gender Stereotyping

Gender stereotyping in cleaning product advertisement is very prominent. When we see a Lysol or Tide commercials, females are always the main character of the ads. They are either cooking in the kitchen or picking up after the kids and they smile and act happy about the fact that they are at home cleaning up after everyone. Although being a housewife is not necessary a bad thing, these commercials categorize all women as filial stay-at-home mom which is not necessarily true. The gender stereotype of housewives is not a big problem. The actual problem is that this stereotype binds women to these duties.

For example, these two advertisements both have females in them. I know that these cleaning supplies are marketed towards women because women are supposed to do a lot of house chores. But I believe that women are conditioned to do house chores. If it weren’t drilled into our culture that women are “suppose” to do all the cleaning in the house then we would not have this concept of “housewives.” Our society needs to learn that women are not all housewives. They do not need to be in charge of house duties and child bearing. Yes, there is a significant amount of stay-at-home-moms, but there is also a growing population of stay-at-home-dads.

This advertisement breaks the “housewife” stereotype and exchanges it for a “house-dad.” We are conditioned to believe that women should do all the house duties, but when you have a commercial like this, it breaks all the rules. Men are allowed to do house chores too and doing so does not make them less of a man. In my perspective, it makes them more of a man.

Now it’s not time to point fingers at anyone for how this stereotype came a social norm of “housewives” came to be, but we need to learn how to change our society’s perspective on gender stereotyping. Women are amazing and we do a pretty good job at cleaning the house, but we do also excel in other things and we should not have to conform to these stereotypes. It is up to our ad agencies to convince the public that women are allowed out of the house.