Female stereotyping in a male dominated creative industry. Is Libra’s Advert humorous or offensive? Abstract: The purpose of this issues paper is to discuss the media representations of sex-gender roles and the use of humour in advertising. Also discussing the risks of humour and whether or not some advertising deliberately intends to be offensive. Moreover, focusing on gender-roles stereotyping in advertising this paper takes into consideration many of the social, cultural and ethical discourses maintained by academic scholars. Furthermore by examining Libras advertising campaign ‘Absorbs more than you ever did in Math’s class’ this paper aims to understand stereotyping and public boycotting. In attention theoretical approaches and other resources are used in order to identify key industry actors and advertising specialists. Moreover this paper attempts to draw …show more content…
Irrespective of the evidence of stereotyping, cultural biases continue to impede women successes in STEM areas (Robb 2014). Libra’s campaign was aimed at the demographic of young women that the University and others have fought in an attempt to break-down negative stereotypes (Trouson 2014). Deborah Kind, Assistant Dean from the University of Melbourne argues that Libra’s advertising campaign reinforces negative stereotypes about girls and young women by telling them that Maths is too hard (Trouson 2014). Consequently, this is not the first time SCA Hygiene, parent company of Libra created controversy for their advertising, having sixteen cases lodged with the Advertising Standards Bureau against different campaigns - although all dismissed (Rob 2014). Libra announced that the company had no intention to ‘stereotype or denigrate the intelligence of women’ (Trouson 2014,