Advertisements are output of a huge industry. According to time, channels, or the TV program that advertising is broadcasted, the brand of the product is to pay large amounts of money to the Television stations. The main role of commercials is to influence buyers to decide on the products. Nevertheless, this is very little of the mission they accomplish. “In today’s media-driven, fast-moving age, ads sell more than just products. They sell lifestyles and dreams” (Gorver & Hundal, 2014: 56). Furthermore, advertisements are so successful not also in persuading the audience to buy the items advertised but also in shaping public opinion of several issues including gender stereotypes. “Advertisers want viewers to enjoy their commercials and to associate the advertised products with a comfortable reinforcing picture of mainstream cultural values. As a result, commercials are designed to take optimal advantage of gender-specific fantasies, myths, and fears” (Gorver&Hundal, 2014: 55). “Advertisers seek to communicate to a target audience with existing beliefs. Advertisers believe that the use of stereotypes makes it easier to communicate to a target audience and to sell their products than the use of multiple, realistic values and beliefs would” (Kim&Lowry, 2005: 901-902). Ads have also undergone several changes over time. For instance, “these days, ads sell images, ideas, even principles and ethics” (Gorver & Hundal, 2014: 56). These differences have led to a change in their contents, too. “However, the depiction of women hasn′t changed all that much, except the inclusion of sexual and more dramatic imagery. Laundry detergent ads still feature mostly women and even if she is ′just a housewife′, she usually lives in a nice house and is slim and beautiful, even though she has three children” (Gorver & Hundal, 2014: 56). TV commercials these days portray an image of the female as a superwoman who can be described as follows: “Superwoman, unaware of its full implications, had to add serious “beauty” labour to her professional agenda. Her new assignment grew ever more rigorous: the amounts of money, skill, and craft she must invest were to fall no lower than the amounts previously expected-before women breached the power structure-only from professional beauties in the display professions. Women took on all at once the roles of professional housewife, professional careerist, and professional beauty” (Wolf, 2002, p. 26-27). Women are generally depicted as ‘housewives’, ‘decorative equipment’, or ‘sexual objects’ in TV commercials. After the increase in their labour force participation rates, they act as working woman, too but not in superior positions; the idea of a working woman is also in the framework of patriarchal understanding (Pazarzi & Tsngaris, 2008). Therefore, they act as the agents of firming the gendered ideas of the society in so many issues. The effects of TV commercials on gender stereotypes are a recurring theme of several studies in a wide range of countries. In order to have a general opinion of the common and different points of this subject in different places of the World, it should be useful to analyse the studies on this issue in different countries.
