Culture and Sex Role Stereotyping in Advertisements; A Comparative Discourse Analysis of Selected Telecommunications in Ghana

Abstract

Advertising in Ghana was started by the juju-men as the “Seller-magician” to ‘advise’ the prospective customers of their potency through chanting with pythons surrounding their products. These juju-men were commonly travelling Muslim herbalists from Northern Nigeria and Mali and were commonly seen in areas of Kumasi (Kwami, 2013). Women are portrayed as better managers of house chores, traditional roles like caring, emotional, needing support and others but men are represented as hard working, ambitious, adventurous and others which affirms the old definition of women from the dominant patriarchy society (women-s.net, 2017, Pillay, 2008). This study was therefore undertaken to critically examine and compare the image of women to men portrayed by the selected telecommunications (that is MTN and Vodafone) in their advertisements, using discourse analysis. This study started from March-August, 2020, purposively, three (3) of each audio- visual MTN Ghana and Vodafone Ghana ads which were similar in products were selected because MTN has 23.9 million subscribers (55.21% of Ghanaian market share) which is more than half of Ghana’s population (30 million people plus), followed by Vodafone Ghana, with 9.3 million subscribers (13.81% of Ghanaian market share). Explorative and descriptive approach was used to gain in-depth understanding for the discourse analysis. The findings of the study revealed that all the six (6) audio-visual ads used had male voice over, both telecommunications’ ads portrayed women as ritualisation of subordination, feminine touch, talkative, gossips and emotional in nature as well as ‘objects to be used’ while men were represented as central figure. Gender and sex roles curriculum can be developed, with gender equality in mind, and added to the school syllabus at the basic, secondary and tertiary level. Also, Government must pay attention to the passage of the Advertising Council Bill to ensure gender and sex roles appropriate content ads. Lastly, organisation of reorientation programmes on gender and sex roles for advertisers and people with authority should be done.