Methodology Draft

During choosing a subject I wanted to focus on I came up with the idea to investigate advertisements from the 1950s and compare them with adverts nowadays based on the level of sexism they contain. I chose to investigate this because I am very aware that sexism in advertising was a common thing in the 1950s and if it really has lessened as much as a lot of individuals think. I realised this may be too broad, so I limited the data I collected specifically to cooking advertisements. I collected my data from the 1950s by searching ‘1950s cooking advertisements’ into Google. I collected my newer data by searching ‘cooking advertisements’ into Google, although after assessing my findings I realised this probably wasn’t a very fair way of collecting information and I wasn’t limiting my variables particularly well. This is due to the individuals that have posted the images on Google. Because of the wide awareness of sexism in advertising in the 1950s, the word sexism is often tagged in amongst the words ‘1950s’ and ‘advertisements’. This means that during my search for 1950s cooking advertisements, I am bound to find the sexist adverts almost immediately. However, with newer cooking advertisements, I have had to type in ‘new sexist cooking advertisements’ in order to find more than just a few, which makes my search unfair. The reason for this is because cooking advertisements nowadays are not deemed as being so obviously sexist, although a lot do still come across as very sexist, just more subtly. In understanding that the research I have already done doesn’t really limit the variables, I have realised that I may have to find a more fair way to collect my data, or change what I am going to be investigating slightly. Another idea I could consider investigating if I don’t find a way to make my searches fair, is to instead investigate how women have been portrayed differently in the past to nowadays in advertising. I think there may be more data available for me to use if I do decide to switch to my plan B.