Excellent point, but it doesn’t take a vocal protest for the commercial to be considered a flop. All it would take is for a significant fraction of the potential customers to be mildly annoyed and not buy the product.
The way I see it, there are basically four options. #1 Use the pronoun “he”, in which case you might annoy some people or make them angry. #2 Use the pronoun “she”, which will make some people give you a thumbs up even if they hate the product you’re selling. #3 Use a gender-neutral pronoun such as “they”, which will annoy the grammar enthusiasts. #4 Avoid using pronouns at all.
I’ll bet they ran focus groups to see which option people liked. I’m not surprised at all that most commercials would opt for #2 or #4, about 50-50.
The fifth option would be to make two versions of the commercial, one with “he” and one with “she” and run then randomly, so half the time you hear “he” and half the time you hear “she”, but this strategy runs the risk of making people mad at you when they hear the “he” version because they might not realize that the “she” version also exists. That option works much better if you’re telling a story that involves several doctors and you can mix it up so some of them are men and some are women. Doesn’t work as well for a short commercial.
A lot of them say, “Ask your doctor if (drug) is right for you.” That dodges gender completely. I imagine writers flipping a coin, as I sometimes do, to choose what pronoun to use. I hate using “they” as a singular, so I usually throw in a he or she, depending on how the coin landed. There are some gender-neutral pronouns, but they aren’t well known, so I don’t use them. It’s seldom good to confuse the reader.
I’m going to vote for confirmation bias, and/or the types of shows the OP watches may not have representative commercials.
But since women and men are close to parity in terms of doctors and students in Med school, why not? After all, do you think that during all those decades where doctors were almost always referred to as ‘he’, there were no female doctors? Or that pronoun frequency always matched the exact ratios of male to female doctors?
If the use of ‘she’ also outnumbers the actual percentage of female doctors, it may be because the commercial company just wants to avoid controversy or protests and is using the ‘safe’ pronoun.
For the same reason, my company’s annual report cover has 16 people on it, of which 4 or 5 are white males. All the rest are various ethnicities split roughly 50/50 men and women. And yet, white males make up probably 50% of the workplace or more. But so what? The company is projecting an image, and it’s allowed to project whatever it wants. and in this day and age, over-representing women and minorities is a lot safer. If that cover had been all white men despite their only being 50% of the workforce, that would have been much more problematic.
Presumed audience for the show is probably a factor. For example, I never see ads for cereal–the shows I watch aren’t appealing to children. However, I see a fair number of Hepatitis C drug ads.
sort of related, I read an article recently that quite a few more women now want a female OB/GYN doctor. In the past women were not that choosy about OB doctors. Of course if you go far enough back there were not a lot of female OB docs.
No one is missing your point. You are almost certainly mistaken about the number of “she” commercials. Got some data to back up your claim (emphasis aded)?
The most plausible explanation to me is that one of the objects of the producer of the commercial is to get people to pay attention and talk to others about it. By using “she”, it makes many listeners to make a double-take. Then, ask someone about it. Just what they want. There is a downside, but most anyone who would take notice at the presumption of a female doctor as being nothing unusual would likely be called out for being sexist (in today’s climate, anyway) so the downside is small.
I haven’t noticed a gender predominance in drug-pushing commercials.
One logical explanation for an overriding use of “she” (if it exists), might be in connection with drugs prescribed for disorders that more commonly affect women (i.e. depression, anxiety and migraines). Some specialties such as OB-GYN and pediatrics attract more women than men, so referring to the doc as “she” would be logical.
This is what I was going to say. I alternate between “he” and “she” in contexts that traditional grammar insisted only on “he.” And I’ve noticed that a lot of judges seem to do that too in their opinions.
I would discount any bowing to politically correct pressure groups. Watch most ads, and they clearly don’t care one whit about being PC unless it is part of the spiel. Every word will be very carefully chosen, and gone over multiple times, with precise understanding of the nuances. Focus groups probably guide many choices.
My take is that in most ads a reference to a doctor will want to convey a figure of trust. “I trust the advice given, you should to.” There is a very interesting social perception change happening for those drugs advertised as recommended by female doctors. The target of the drug ad is perceived by the advertiser as someone who trusts the advice of a female doctor over a male one. Simple as that. A view of a patriarchal ossified medical profession in the thrall of big phama money is becoming more mainstream. The image of an older male doctor as the figure of rust has eroded. I can see using “she” to indicate a much more trustworthy figure simply because “she” is, by definition, not part of that dated, tainted, patriarchal institution.
Perhaps they’re not bowing to politically correct pressure groups directly, but to the extent that “political correctness” has gone mainstream, listening to focus groups is just political correctness once removed.
I’ve been trying to gather data on the OP’s observation since this thread started, but I haven’t noticed any commercials since then that refer to a doctor by either gendered pronoun.
Robot Arm, how many commercials have you seen during your data-gathering that refer to a doctor at all? A truly useful survey would be one which lists all commercials seen in the survey that refer to a doctor at all. Then it would break down that total into categories as follows:
Refer to doctors in general by she
Refer to doctors in general by he
Refer to doctors in general without using either she or he
Only one, so far; it was that “ask your doctor if Gleemonex is right for you” generic sort. I guess my TV watching the last few days hasn’t been the sort of programs that carry much medical advertising.
I have noticed commercials in recent years that have doctors on-screen that are clearly female, even if they’re not referred to as “she” or “her”. Never really paid attention if it was more or less than 50%; and I don’t know if the OP is including those in his data gathering.
I remember only a generation back the following riddle:
A man and his son are riding in a car and get into an accident. The man is killed instantly, but the son is alive, though gravely injured. He is rushed to the hospital and into surgery. The ER surgeon comes in, takes one look and declares, “I cannot operate; this is my son.”
What is wrong with this story?
One would hope the answer is now obvious, but back then, an awful lot of people were incapable of seeing the surgeon as the boy’s mother.