Stereotyping or Segmentation? An Analysis of Gender in Children’s Advertising Across Networks

Relying on Social Learning Theory, this study supports findings of previous research: that gender stereotypy still exists in children’s advertising. In 556 television commercials, the imbalance in representation and role portrayed conveyed that boys are more important in the context of the commercial in comparison to girls.  However, the weight of this finding can be mitigated somewhat by segregating the results by channel. After analyzing the data by network (i.e., Cartoon Network, The Disney Channel, and Nick), the advertising strategy appears to be more of good gender segmentation and targeting and perhaps not gender stereotypy. The study has implications for future research examining stereotypy in advertising.