Gender Beliefs and Creative Decisions in Advertising: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment

Abstract

This paper examines the role of gender beliefs in driving gender misrepresentation in advertising creative decisions. Using a pre-registered randomized experiment with approximately 2,000 advertising practitioners across four markets, we document that advertisers systematically misperceive the gender composition of their markets: they overestimate male usage in male-typed markets by 6-16 percentage points and female usage in female-typed markets by 23-26 percentage points. These stereotypical priors predict creative choices—advertisers who perceive a larger gender gap choose more single-gender portrayals and more gender-typical character depictions. A low-cost information treatment revealing the true market gender composition substantially shifts gender presence: the share of ads featuring both genders increases by 14-29 percentage points, driven by advertisers with the largest prior biases—consistent with belief updating. However, the treatment leaves gender typing largely unchanged: the contextual framing of characters remains as stereotyped as in the control group. This asymmetry suggests that information corrects who is shown in an ad but not how they are portrayed, pointing to the limits of belief-based interventions and the role of deeper normative forces in sustaining stereotype-consistent portrayals.