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Gender and Television
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Museum of Broadcast Communications
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Gender Stereotypes and Television --
A Guide to Articles and Web Sites
Today's portrayals of men and women on television depict both society's changing expectations as well as unchanging stereotypes from decades ago. 
While some airtime is given to assertive, independent career women and nurturing, domesticated men, many prime-time shows have left men and women in traditional, stereoptypical roles. Viewers accept or reject these assigned roles typically based on societal expectations. A broad consideration of gender stereotypes in television sitcoms begins with traditional roles seen in programming of the 1950's. The 1960's and 70's, however, presented some of the first changes in gender role portrayal and reflected political movements of the time. Change continued to be the theme throughout the 80's and 90's as sitcoms revolved around women who assumed more roles outside the home and men who were portrayed as more domesticated. The selections gathered here provide several perspectives on how the roles of men and women in television have changed and how television is often ultimately a projection of society's values. These sources represent only a small sampling of varying view points of gender stereotyping in television programming, but serve as a foundation for both an interesting and worthwhile topic of continued research.
