Gender in advertisements for sanitary equipment. The case of Roca company

Abstract

Advertising needs to resort to collective imaginations and to build stereotypes. One of them has been gender. The treatment that advertising has made of men and women has contributed to building and maintaining the cultural and social roles attributed to masculinity and femininity. However, these representations have been changing, very slowly, in recent decades. In this communication we analyse what has been the evolution of the treatment of gender in a company, already centenary: the Roca company. Newspaper ads and advertising catalogues between 1927 and 2017 are studied.