Gender Roles in Sitcoms
Gender roles in Sitcoms
“Gender is the crucial factor in characterization in the majority of sitcoms. Up until the impact of feminism in the 1970s, in the UK at least, it is clear that most of the successful sitcoms featured leading male characters (Hancock, Steptoe, Dad’s Army, Till Death Do Us Part, Porridge etc.). Women were more likely to feature in ‘ensemble casts’ – The Rag Trade, Are You Being Served? This was also a function of the employment opportunities for women. Since the 1970s, women in leading roles have been more common (but the most successful comedies have tended to be based on couples rather than single women).” (Roy Stafford, TV Sitcoms and Gender, ONLINE)
Based on television analysis it is very simple to notice what it means to be a mother, from the television’s perspective: to be a mother means to cook when your husband is hungry, to clean the house when necessary, to take care of the children etc. To be a father means to work and to come home expecting a cooked meal for whenever you are hungry, to make the tough decisions and to be the dominate figure in the household.
Television is saying a lot about the roles of male and female couples. In what concerns the female types in sitcoms, Roy Stafford suggested a specific classification, across comedy and drama since the 1950s:
• Matron/Working Battleaxes
• Sexy assistant
• Business matriarch
• Woman in a Man’s World
• The Vamp (1980s)
• Woman in Power
• Women who fight other women
• Woman who watches her ‘biological clock’
For my paper I chose to talk about three different sitcoms, namely: Bewitched (1964 –1972), The Nanny (1993–1999) and Cougar Town (2009).
Bewitched (1964–1972)
“A young-looking witch named Samantha meets and marries a mortal named Darrin Stephens. While Samantha pledges to forsake her powers and become a typical suburban housewife, her magical family disapproves of the mixed
“Gender is the crucial factor in characterization in the majority of sitcoms. Up until the impact of feminism in the 1970s, in the UK at least, it is clear that most of the successful sitcoms featured leading male characters (Hancock, Steptoe, Dad’s Army, Till Death Do Us Part, Porridge etc.). Women were more likely to feature in ‘ensemble casts’ – The Rag Trade, Are You Being Served? This was also a function of the employment opportunities for women. Since the 1970s, women in leading roles have been more common (but the most successful comedies have tended to be based on couples rather than single women).” (Roy Stafford, TV Sitcoms and Gender, ONLINE)
Based on television analysis it is very simple to notice what it means to be a mother, from the television’s perspective: to be a mother means to cook when your husband is hungry, to clean the house when necessary, to take care of the children etc. To be a father means to work and to come home expecting a cooked meal for whenever you are hungry, to make the tough decisions and to be the dominate figure in the household.
Television is saying a lot about the roles of male and female couples. In what concerns the female types in sitcoms, Roy Stafford suggested a specific classification, across comedy and drama since the 1950s:
• Matron/Working Battleaxes
• Sexy assistant
• Business matriarch
• Woman in a Man’s World
• The Vamp (1980s)
• Woman in Power
• Women who fight other women
• Woman who watches her ‘biological clock’
For my paper I chose to talk about three different sitcoms, namely: Bewitched (1964 –1972), The Nanny (1993–1999) and Cougar Town (2009).
Bewitched (1964–1972)
“A young-looking witch named Samantha meets and marries a mortal named Darrin Stephens. While Samantha pledges to forsake her powers and become a typical suburban housewife, her magical family disapproves of the mixed
Bibliography: Example Essays, Roles Of Women In Television, http://www.exampleessays.com/viewpaper/94865.html, ONLINE, 2002-2012 Patricia Fairfield-Artman, Rodney E. Lippard, Adrienne Sansom, Bewitched ... the 1960s sitcom revisited: a queer read, http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Taboo/141753933.html, ONLINE, 2005 Peter Calixte, Gender Roles in Television, http://voices.yahoo.com/gender-roles-television-1299511.html?cat=41, ONLINE, 2012 Rebecca Peterson, Womens roles on television, http://rebeccarpeterson.blogspot.com/2009/01/womens-roles-on-television.html, ONLINE, 2012 Roy Stafford, TV Sitcoms and Gender, http://www.mediaculture-online.de/fileadmin/bibliothek/stafford_sitcoms/stafford_sitcoms.pdf, ONLINE, 2004 Wikipedia, Bewitched, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bewitched, ONLINE, 2012 Wikipedia, Cougar Town, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cougar_Town, ONLINE, 2012 Wikipedia, The Nanny, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nanny, ONLINE, 2012