In the past, discussions of stereotyping in advertising mostly revolved around the portrayal of women and frequently around the use of sexualised images. These issues are very much still live - Unilever’s 2015 research, for example, showed that 40% of women around the world did not identify with the way women are portrayed in advertising - but the debate is shifting as advertisers slowly wake up to the idea that they can be equally guilty of stereotyping men.
In 2017, the UK’s advertising watchdog signalled tougher regulationof campaigns that feature potentially harmful gender stereotypes, and in 2018 the...