An Asian Perspective on the Portrayal of Men and Women in Television Advertisements: Studies From Hong Kong and Indonesian Television

This paper reports on 2 studies with almost identical methodologies. Both were content analysis studies of the way that men and women are portrayed on television (TV) in South East Asia. One study was conducted in Hong Kong, where 175 TV advertisements were content analyzed. The other was conducted in Indonesia, where 119 TV advertisements were content analyzed. In Hong Kong, 9 of the 10 content categories yielded a significant gender-role effect, particularly mode of presentation, credibility, and role. In Indonesia, 9 of the 11 gender-role effects were significant, particularly reward type and product type. The fact that Asian TV commercials seem to have greater gender-role stereotypes than do Western commercials is discussed. Difficulties associated with cross-cultural comparisons of this type of data are discussed.