Women's Roles In Television

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The Evolution of Women’s Roles in Television: What’s Changed and What Has Not Over the years women have played multiple roles in many television genres. In the early years of television women often starred in soap operas and then as housewives in a range of different sitcoms such as I Love Lucy, The Goldbergs, and several others. As time went on their roles changed. For example, in the 1960’s show Get Smart had a woman co-starring as a secret agent, and in the 1970’s The Mary Tyler Moore Show starred a woman and included female co-stars as well. Today, women not only have leading roles in many television shows, such as Grey’s Anatomy, and Supernatural, they are also no longer portrayed as only housewives, homemakers, and mothers. While they …show more content…
In the episode “Job Switching”, Lucy and her friend Ethel trade places with their husbands, agreeing to get jobs for a week while the men do the housework. This all began when their husbands argued that all women do is spend money and lay around the house all day. Early into his duties, Ricky states “the only reason women claim that housework is so hard is because they don’t use their heads” (“Job Switching”). Throughout the day, both sexes realize that their significant others’ tasks are not as easy as they seem. Both Lucy and Ethel go through several departments at their candy maker job and their husbands ruin blouses while ironing and completely destroy the kitchen in an attempt to cook dinner. While women are still portrayed as only being capable as housewives with their efforts going initially unappreciated, I Love Lucy an improvement compared to The Goldbergs because their husbands are eventually understanding and grateful for the work they do at home.
Critic Lynn Spangler describes Lucy as “an imp who conflicted with society’s expectations of her” and that she was “not content to be just a housewife and mother”. While the show often stayed true to the gender roles of the time, Lucy’s desire to do more and frequently act against her husband’s wishes is a vast difference from Molly’s submissive behavior in The Goldbergs (Spangler). While I Love Lucy …show more content…
It follows Mary Richards after she leaves her boyfriend and moves to Minneapolis on her own as a single woman and manages to obtain a job at her local news station as an associate producer. Unlike any sitcoms that came before it, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was innovative, progressive, and the first show to star a single, successful woman in her thirties. It essentially took the traditional gender roles and labels and threw them away, along with the typical sitcom themes. While in previous years sitcoms showed women primarily in the home, The Mary Tyler Moore Show split the time between the workplace and Mary’s apartment, where she often interacted with her friends and neighbors rather than being portrayed as a homemaker going about her chores. Mary’s ability to walk away from her longterm boyfriend because he did not want to marry her was an important aspect of the show and an empowering moment for women, especially due to the fact that she was thirty and by then a lot was expected of her in the familial area of her life. When Mary is interviewed for her job at the news station she is interrogated by her boss with inappropriate questions which she is quick to shut down and stands up for herself. In her book, an author named Lynn Spangler mentions another episode where Mary tries to demand equal pay for her job because the man before her earned a higher salary,
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