IOSR Journal of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) Volume 26, Issue 5, Series 2 (May. 2021) 28-36 e-ISSN: 2279-0837, p-ISSN: 2279-0845. www.iosrjournals.org DOI: 10.9790/0837-2605022836 www.iosrjournals.org 28 |Page Portrayal of Women in Print Media: A Content Analysis of Advertisements of Kannada Dailies Prof.Onkaragouda Kakade 1 , Srushthi Javalkar 2 1 Professor, Dept of Journalism and Mass Communication, Karnataka State Akkamahadevi Women’s University, Vijayapura, Karnataka, India 2 Research Scholar, Dept of Journalism and Mass Communication, Karnataka State Akkamahadevi Women’s University, Vijayapura, Karnataka, India Abstract The projection of women’s image in media is quite degrading and leaves lot to be desired. Most of the information available puts women under same stereotype image which exists down the years. For decades, media representation of men and women has posed common concerns among researchers Worldwide. A wide variety of debates have been running about its negative and positive depictions. With the advertising being one of the major option that have bought advantages as well as challenges. This paper has analyses the similar context of women in advertisements in specific to Kannada daily Newspapers. For this study, the researchers examined advertisements of two leading newspapers of Kannada language namely Vijayavani and Vijaya Karnataka. The researcher collected three months Newspaper (VV and VK) and adopted content analysis method to study and to analyze the content of advertisements in the respective dailies. In spite growing gender awareness and more females in media, the mainstream print media has still been using female images and particularly the glamorous pictures of celebrities objectifying the aesthetic values of female body. It has been also observed from the study that, women mostly found in the advertisements confined to food, cosmetics and other domestic products rather automobiles and electronics. Key words: Gender, Masculinity, Newspaper advertisement, Gendered Media, Portrayal, Stereotypes, Female images. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date of Submission: 24-04-2021 Date of Acceptance: 08-05-2021 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. INTRODUCTION: Media is said to be the fourth pillar of our society and how women are portrayed in media remains a debatable topic and an important area of research till date. Advertising being an important part of media is not untouched from similar debates. Portrayal of women in advertisements is an eternal part of advertising industry. Advertisement portrays women in various roles as diverse of an ordinary housewife to a completely professional career woman. Currently, there is a significant shift in the manner how women are portrayed in advertisements. Women’s role has now evolved and women are often projected as empowered ones. Empowerment can be viewed as means of creating a social environment in which one can make decisions and make choices either individually or collectively for social transformation. It strengthens the innate ability by way of acquiring knowledge, power and experience (Jacob, 2013). Empowerment can overall be defined as all those processes where women take control and ownership of their lives. Control and ownership requires an array of opportunities to choose among and this understanding of empowerment overlaps with the concept of human development when defined as a process of enlarging peoples’ choices (Manuh, 2006). The mass media plays a pivotal role in changing, altering, molding, shaping and reforming the thoughts of every individual and the mass thereby influencing the perception, behavior, habits and lifestyle of all. It is well known that mass media continuously feed the messages which may not cover all aspects of reality. II. LITERATURE REVIEW Geis, Brown, Jennings and Porter (1984) had conducted a study on 160 respondents from where they found that those respondents who watched commercials were more likely to be home-bound and more interested in household chores than in career growth. Vestergaard & Schroder, (1985) claimed that content contributes to the Fulfillment of the material needs of individuals, social needs and goods purchased by individuals 38 are an indicator of their character. They further claimed that advertisement is like a public announcement to encourage the sale of goods and services.