Disarming gender stereotypes in television cleaning commercials

Abstract

Advertisements are created to be influential. An advertiser's job is to convince the audience that they need to buy their product or service. However, advertisements, especially those for cleaning, feed into negative gender stereotypes since women are often seen as the ones doing the cleaning. In my research, I looked at television commercials for Dawn dish soap and Tide laundry detergent commercials from 1960 to 2023 and found that depicting women in a certain light leads to stereotypes. The three main stereotypes women are often portrayed as in cleaning commercials are the nagging wife, the “ideal” woman, and the all-knowing woman. My research also includes the responsibility of advertisers and what they can do to create inclusive advertisements.