The representation of women in Japanese television advertising. A content analysis of female roles and stereotypes

Abstract

This paper analyses the different stereotypes in advertising on Japanese television channels: TV Tokyo, TV Fuji, NHK, TV Asahi, and TBL, broadcast in April 2021. This object of study is motivated by the scarcity of works that deal with this type of material, since most of the research on stereotypes in relation to women has focused on graphic advertisements in magazines. A content analysis has been carried out of 173 advertisements and 237 female characters in 2022. The results confirm the existence of six different stereotypes: traditional, subjugated, transgressive, kawaii, kirei and lolita women. In addition, in contrast to the studies by Prieler, Kohlbacher, Hagiwara and Arima (2015), it is confirmed that the different gender stereotypes are not related to the ages represented, but rather linked to the attributes represented. For the traditional woman, motherhood, love and family; in the subjugated woman, weakness, submission and sadness; in the transgressive woman, transgression, modernity and triumph; regarding the kawaii woman, sexual attraction, pleasure and seduction; in the case of the kirei woman, maturity or innocence, and the lolita stereotype is inversely related to sweetness.