Must women be seen to be heard? Voice and gender bias in TV adverts
This article in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies examines the voice in TV advertising and its relation to visual image and gender. Do advertising voiceovers affect consumer perceptions of gender? Using quantitative and qualitative analysis, Pedelty & Kuecker test their hypotheses on these issues. Their fascinating results reveal some thought provoking insights into audio visual media gender representations.
Having trawled through 1000 plus TV ads, it was found that 80% of voiceovers are male. Moreover any female voiceovers are predominantly embodied by an attractive woman, whereas male voices are often disembodied or represented by both ugly and attractive men. So, why is there such an imbalance in representation? Does a woman have to be beautiful to be worth listening to? Despite consumers’ ambivalence for gender of voiceover, some marketers claim a male voice to be more authoritative, more knowledgeable. Going further male and female voices seem tailored to their role; men adopting characteristics such as adventure, technical knowledge, power and women being heard in relation to domestic settings, relationships and fulfilling nurturing roles. Even deeper seated cultural, political and economic issues round the world further entrench the huge gender imbalance in media representation of women. An infamous marketing dictum “men act, women appear” has come to fruition in TV advertising.
The proliferation of silent women in the “male gaze” seems to reinforce old prejudices and sexism which have long been balanced out in other areas; female competence appears frequently undermined in popular ads. The authors’ qualitative studies of adverts also proved that representation of gender roles are largely rigid “men’s and women’s voices and bodies tend to be represented in ways that reify dualistic understandings of gender: man/woman, mind/body, culture/nature, public/private, business/domestic, active/passive, and so on”. The authors stress the significance of voice in media representations of women. They note “when a woman’s voice is present, she is not speaking to the population at large but to dogs, cats, babies, children, and women dieters”. Should we agree with the authors that stereotyping of women in this way is highly problematic?
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