Gender stereotypes in Moroccan television advertising

Abstract

Nowadays, it is vital to communicate about it one business. In fact, different means and tools are used by companies to transmit information to their targets. It has now become a certainty that the advertising remains the best way to transmit information. The aim of television advertising is to give the maximum amount of information in a short time and to achieve this, television advertising biases and stereotyped information.

In Morocco, as elsewhere, advertising and stereotypes are usually linked, but the main victim is the woman who is overloaded with negative pictures, devaluing and degrading her values, especially with the television having a remarkable influence due to its dominant place in Moroccan homes. These stereotypes are involuntarily, constantly and systematically found in the creative process, but fortunately, the Moroccan advertising ecosystem is aware of this and is becoming sensitive to the values of parity and gender equality.

The aim of our article is to discover the presence of gender stereotypes in Moroccan television advertising and how women manifest themselves in it. And to answer this, our literature review has affirmed that this effect is present and that Moroccan television advertisements tend to confine women to traditional roles. This redundancy of innovative ideas is a possibly unconscious move that reinforces the sexist stereotype. For our field study, we tried to understand all sides of gender stereotyping in television advertising and understand the source of this anomaly. Semi-directive interviews were conducted with 13 advertising actors, from the advertiser to the director and the creative staff. The struggle is on, but there is still a long way to go to eradicate negative stereotype against women. As a matter of fact, the analysis of this gratifying experience highlighted the fact that the consumer who wants change does not contribute, but biases the studies carried out by polling and opinion marketing companies. It was suggested that those in charge of market research should choose the target group carefully so as not to have distorted results. Moreover it was also suggested that creative and advertisers should be daring in order to propose novelty and marketing manager that should dare to be creative and different.

JEL Classification: M37

Paper type: Empirical research