The Construction of Gender through Children's Advertisements: A Content Analysis of Children's Advertisements on Turkish TV Channels

As early as 2 years of age children are aware of and affected by gender roles and these role perceptions are resistant to change. Thus, as one of the important social categorizations in human life, once gender stereotypes are created, and maintained by individual level, which in turn predict the way of thinking and behaving of whole society. In contemporary consumption culture, advertisements constitute one of widely used reference points in clearly determining which behaviors are appropriate for boys and which are appropriate for girls. Thus, the purpose of this study is to analyze gender portrayals in children's advertisements in a holistic way, and determine the relative role of advertisements toward children in producing gender roles. In this context, in March 2018, a content analysis was conducted for advertisements targeted to children on total of five Turkish nationwide TV channels (three of them are specific to children). Advertisements in the toy and food categories have been examined in terms of gender differences such as the sexes, discourses, voiceovers, and the places used in advertisements. To the best to our knowledge, the limited number of current studies in Turkey focusing on children's advertisements with regard to gender portrayals in Turkey constitutes the original contribution of this paper.