DefinePK

Abstract

Advertisement influences the world view of people and is used as tool to impart a certain type of ideology in society. Advertisements help in constructing and deconstructing the concepts that general public hold. They also help in constructing gender roles. This research paper involves the analysis of advertisements of sanitary products i-e pads. The basic purpose of the present research is to examine the representation of women in advertisements of products which belong to women only and also investigate the message encoded in these advertisements and the kind of ideologies they construct. For the analysis of data Kress and Leeuwen’s multimodal is used as theoretical framework in this research. A sample of two video commercials is used for the analysis. Data analysis shows the differential representation of women in sanitary product advertisements. Women are mostly portrayed as mothers, housewives, and in association to beauty and fashion but in these advertisements, they focus more on women strength, power and competitiveness. This difference indicates that women in comparison to men are always portrayed as submissive while the advertisements which are gender specific the portrayal of women is entirely different and this strong representation empowers women.