Marketing Equality: Counteracting structural gender discrimination using non-objectifying portrayals of women

Sammanfattning: Previous studies have shown that objectification of women, a recurring phenomenon in marketing communication, causes people to perceive women as less competent in matters of the public world. This competence inadequacy perception forms the basis of a form of structural gender discrimination, which excludes women from the collective production of social beliefs and institutions. By conducting an experiment, using a modified version of the Saying-Is-Believing-paradigm, the aim of this study was to examine whether exposure to non-objectifying portrayals of women can change the competence perception and counteract the structural gender discrimination. In addition to validating the existence of the structural gender discrimination, our findings indicate that short-term exposure to non-objectifying portrayals of women can counteract the structural gender discrimination amongst female participants.