Gender Stereotypes In The 1970's

Back then, gender stereotypes were very much prominent in how people thought about men and women, so evidently, this notion was transferred into our media, specifically, television. As a result of this, female TV characters were depicted as loving and caring but ultimately, were always portrayed as the housewife who was always confused, weak and fragile. In the 1950s, television created a female character: Lucy who was the “model” of a woman who wanted to explore the public sphere of work life to be a singer, actor and dancer. So she would create these plans to achieve these jobs but always ended up failing and eventually going back home. Although, this is an improvement from the stereotypical “housewife” character, it still is a negative portrayal of women; the fact that her plans to find work always result in her messing up is not a good message to women and young girls who watched these shows. It is telling them that women should not attempt to find work or explore their options outside of the home, because

The message from this is that everyone comes before her and her wellbeing is not relevant. But in the 1970s, a character named Mary Richards on the TV show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, was born. She was different than any female character on TV because she was single and she was in touch with her sexuality. This goes against all the stereotypes of female characters on TV as they were always portrayed with a husband/ boyfriend, as if they could not go through life alone, and they never expressed or talked about sexuality as it was deemed “taboo”. Her character opened the door for a larger variety of female oriented characters to be created- ones that were not the typical housewife