Representation of Aging in the Context of Gender Roles: A Study on Television Advertisements

Abstract

Advertising has the potential to reflect, reproduce and shape social values. Therefore, it would be possible to claim that there are several ways in which advertisements reflect, reproduce and shape the values related to elderliness. On the other hand, existing studies in Turkey on the representations of the elderly in advertisements provide limited information in determining different variables in these representations. In this regard, the primary purpose of this study is to explore how elderly people are represented in advertisements with a particular focus on the role of gender roles in these representations. For this aim, this article applies a quantitative content analysis method by analyzing individuals who are 50-years old and older and appear in television advertisements. The analysis is conducted on 468 elderly people who play in 2.908 ads broadcast in national television channels during the prime-time hour (20.00-22.59) between January 4th and February 2nd, 2021. Frequencies and Chi-Square tests were used in the data analysis. Although the results showed that both genders are inadequately represented, elderly women are represented relatively more inadequately compared to elderly men. Elderly women are mostly depicted as passive individuals at home as grandmothers, parents, or wives while elderly men are often represented as active and single individuals having important roles. At this point, it is concluded that the imposed stereotyped gender roles are reproduced through the representations of elderly people on television advertisements.