Gender & Television

As a chick, I naturally find this fascinating:

In a two-part article written for TV Guide in 1964, best-selling author of The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan claimed that television has represented the American woman as a "stupid, unattractive, insecure little household drudge who spends her martyred, mindless, boring days dreaming of love--and plotting nasty revenge against her husband." Almost thirty years later, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Susan Faludi suggested that the practices and programming of network television in the 1980s were an attempt to get back to those earlier stereotypes of women, thereby countering the effects of the women's movement that Friedan's messages had inspired in the late 1960s and 1970s.

I'm also not surprised.

But this was complete news to me:

NOW formed a task force to study and change the derogatory stereotypes of women on television, and in 1972 they challenged the licenses of two network-owned stations on the basis of their sexist programming and advertising practices. Although they were unsuccessful in this latter strategy, NOW and other women's groups provided much needed pressure when CBS tried to cancel Cagney and Lacey, a "buddy" cop show and the first primetime drama to star two women. Conceived in 1974 by Barbara Corday and Barbara Avedon, two women inspired by critic Molly Haskell's study of women's portrayal in film, Cagney and Lacey was originally turned down by all three networks, only getting on the air after eight years. Producer Barney Rosenzweig worked closely with organized women's groups and female fans to support the show during threats of cancellation, after CBS fired the first actress to portray Christine Cagney because she was not considered "feminine enough," and during periods when the show aired controversial episodes on such topics as abortion clinic bombings.

Go read the rest.