Gender Stereotypes in Modern Russia: Between Traditionalism and Postmodernism

A gender stereotype is summarized information on roles, appearance and fields of activity for each gender. Visual research methods play a special part in the gender studies, the basic understanding of women and men are established by the means of different types of visual data.

The gender stereotypes most prevalent in modern Russian advertising research was carried out in 2014. The research is based on the methodology provided by visual studies (firstly, founded on theories of Maffesoli, Latour, Goffman, Urri and others; secondly, founded on the method of discourse analysis of visual objects).

The first stage of the research included the examination of the data consolidated by Russian Public Opinion Research Center, the data related to Russian attitude towards the gender roles, the family, the women involvement into politics and government.

On the basis of these data the research hypothesis was formed: gender stereotypes are self-contradictory, they are developed around two axiological points - traditionalism and postmodernism.    

The aim of the second stage of the research is confirmation of the hypothesis by the investigation of gender stereotypes in advertising mostly appeared on the central Russian TV channels. The roles of advertising characters demonstrating one of the highlighted trends were distinguished.

A list of features was formed as a result of the investigation of advertising images by the method of discourse analysis (features belonging to external aspects of gender – such as color, scene position, emotions expressed, also features fixing dominate functions and activities of women and men) that mark either the traditional or postmodern gender orientations.

The traditional type images predominated though postmodern gender orientations (for example, the male involvement into traditionally female occupation) aren`t rarely encountered.

It was concluded that Russian gender stereotypes combine both directions including traditional and postmodern elements though the most prevalent one is traditionalism.