Gender casting in television toy advertisements: Distributions, message content analysis, and evaluations

This article offers new information about real-life frequency distributions, voiced-message characteristics, and adults' suitability evaluations of children's TV ads that promote gender-linked toys. A survey of 856 recent commercials showed that toy ads were sharply compartmentalized regarding live gender representation and roles. The designs of two subsequent studies were defined in terms of all-boy, boy-and-girl, and, all-girl casts. In the first, voiced messages in toy ads were examined with the Minnesota Contextual Content Analysis text-reading computer program. Results were that all-boy ads were characterized by a practical subtext, boy-and-girl ads were seen to have a traditional or normative thrust, and all-girl ads were emotional in tone. In the second study, adults evaluated selected toys in ads on behalf of boy and girl targets. All-boy ad products were seen as suitable only for boy targets, all-girl ad products were seen as suitable only for girl targets, but boy-and-girl ad products were judged generally suitable for both targets. The three sets of data led to the conclusion that toys in ads continue to be linked with gender stereotypes and to the suggestion that this trend might be on the increase.