Sex differentiation in magazine advertisements a content analysis using log-linear modeling

This study examines portrayals of men's and women's roles in 2, 000 magazine advertisements that appeared between 1960 and 1979 in Vogue, Ladies' Home Journal, Playboy, and Time. The data include over 150 ads for each of the following product groups: clothes, beauty aids, health aids, tobacco, food, goods and services sold to businesses, alcoholic beverages, vehicles, and books or magazines We analyze the presentation of men and women in ads along four dimensions: age, activity, occupation, and product use. For each of these four dimensions log-linear modeling is used to determine how different the portrayals of men and women were and whether the sex differentiation in ads decreased between 1960 and 1979. The content analysis revealed considerable sex-typing in ads, and a surprising lack of change in the extent of sex-typing between 1960 and 1979. Comparing portrayals in ads with data on Americans' behavior, we conclude that advertisements portray more sex differentiation than is actually present in American men's and women's real-life roles. We conclude with a discussion of policy implications.