Sitcoms Gender Roles

For a large part of the history of TV sitcoms women have been portrayed as mothers or as having to fulfill the woman's role in the private sphere. Family based sitcoms were one of the forms of sitcom that keep women in these roles, but what is interesting is that even in other forms of sitcoms women do not truly escape these roles. Sitcoms, like Sex and the City and Murphy Brown showcase women whom have seemingly escaped these roles, by showing liberated women, but that does not mean that both do not fall into the gender role showcased in family sitcoms. It draws the similarities between ensemble sitcoms and family sitcoms when it comes down to the role of women. The starring women in both Sex and the City and Murphy Brown, and even the Mary

Tyler Moore Show are all examples of shows starring liberated women who are supposed to be free from solely the private sphere. What binds these shows, besides being based around liberated women, is the fact that even though they are ensemble or workplace sitcoms, they are all also family sitcoms. The difference is that in these shows the women have the main role and there entire focus is not on their actual relatives but on the families they have created on the show. However, simply because women have escaped the binding of simply being relegated to the role of the mother, it does not mean they have left those bindings all together.
Sex and the City was a show that was centered around four 'liberated women.' The idea was that these women were all financially independent and a part of the public sphere and open about their sexual lives and were not constrained to stay at home.

The four title characters are Carrie Bradshaw, who writes a sex column, Samantha Jones, who is a PR rep and is know for her many sexual partners, Miranda Hobbes, an attorney, and Charlotte York, an art curator. Sex and the City is an ensemble show with Carrie as the main character but story lines being divided evenly among all the four women with focuses on the issues they face. The women are liberated because they are free to have sex and are not forced to remain in the private sphere while their male counter parts get to work. However, simply because these women all have jobs it does not mean that their roles in the public sphere is the central aspect of the show. The show is actually centered around the relationships the four women have with men and with each other. The four women on this show are not able to escape the gender roles and expectations that are put on women. On the show not much of the story is devoted to the work lives of these women, besides Carrie's column that is actually about her life, even though they all have very nice clothes and apartments and that is obviously paid for some how. These women are all focused primarily on their personal relationships with men and the hope of some like Charlotte to find the

right partner.
On the other side of the spectrum you have the Murphy Brown show that is a work place sitcom. Murphy Brown is not an ensemble show like Sex and the City and is actually very much focused on her career as a journalist and anchor on a news station. Murphy Brown is a very successful career women and the show directly reflects that, with most of the story lines of the show focusing on her career. Murphy does not spend much time focusing on looking for a new relationship but is instead based around her work in the public sphere. This makes Murphy Brown similar to the women on Sex and the City because they are all liberated women who have to go against the gender conventions. Murphy Brown is also linked to the Mary Tyler Moore Show because it is also a work place sitcom based around a liberated woman who must navigate the work force that is dominated by men.
Murphy Brown, Sex and the City, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show are all examples of shows that have focused entirely on the liberated women, however simply because these shows no longer portray women as just confined to the home it does not mean that those roles have been left behind entirely. Sex and the City is the show that more than the others focuses on the private aspect of the lives of these women. The main focus on most of the story lines is toward the romantic relationships that these women embark on, that while it is freeing that these women are free to have multiply relationships it forces them back into their expected roles. The character of Charlotte is the one that is most openly attempting to enter into a marriage, reflecting the expectation upon women to find a man, get married and have kids, while the character is supposed to be portrayed that way while being sexually open the problem is that that is all she fixates on. But the show does not stop there, it not only has the character that is suppose to be fixating on family doing so but it also has the one career driven woman also fall into that mold. Miranda had always been the most level headed member of the group and has placed importance on her legal career, unfortunately as soon as she is placed in a committed relationship with her future husband Steve, she begins to fall into the role of mother, both figuratively and literally. Miranda becomes pregnant after a one-night stand with Steve and she grapples with the decision to become a mother, however this is not her only mothering act or role. When Steve is diagnosed with cancer it is Miranda who steps up to take care of him by handling his health-care when he hasn't, essentially mothering him. After Steve and Miranda get married they move to Brooklyn, to live in a more suburban area, and she helps to take care of Steve's mother, placing her back into the role and the burdens on the mother in the private sphere.
However, Miranda is not the only career focused women who was then placed in the role of the mother.

Murphy's entire life revolved around her work, but in the shows fourth season to the surprise of her and of her co-workers she becomes pregnant. In the fourth season opener to Murphy Brown, Murphy even goes into a speech about how at her age she did not expect to have children, addressing the issue of the biological clock and presenting her with the dilemma many working mothers face, and that is how she is going to handle her career and her son. While Murphy does remain at work, she can no longer simple be a reporter. The opening sequence of that episode also shows Murphy faced with multiple doors with her ex-husband, babies, and Supreme Court justices behind them symbolizing the choices that Murphy must make, placing her in the position of balancing the opportunities in the private and public

spheres.
While Sex and the City and Murphy Brown might be two shows that on its surface have different formatting they are both shows about the family that one has outside of their family. On Sex and the City these four women are each others family and the ones they turn to in their time of need, not their actual relatives who we hardly see because these women form their own family. When Miranda becomes pregnant Charlotte, who was facing fertility issues, was not happy that Miranda was considering abortion and when Miranda decides to keep the baby, Charlotte's response is indicative of their familial relationship, “we're having a baby.” On Murphy Brown it is not her relationship with her family that is the focus, it is the relationship she has with her co-workers, who are the first to learn of her pregnancy, that is the center of the show.