Feminism and Television grew up together in the Twentieth century. The first wave of feminism, the suffragettes, was in the nineteenth and early twentieth century; while the television was first patented in 1884 and the first instantaneous transmission in 1909. Second wave feminism, which is still working with third wave feminism today, began in the early 1960’s; while commercial licenses were given out for television starting in 1941 and were in every state in the United States by 1954.
More than time links these two advances. Television has grown steadily in popularity since its inception. In the 1950’s, homes started filling up with televisions and today it is typical for a household to have multiple sets that get over 75 channels, with the top show averaging over 14 million viewers. Many of the shows in the past 25 years of television, have shown the growing influence of the feminism movement by being a thermometer of the culture or by showing something closer to an ideal of what the feminism movement would like to see.
In this paper, I will explore how television can be used as a method to further a social movement through normalization by looking at “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and the feminist movement.
Feminism
Feminism can mean many different things, depending on who is using it, and in what context. For the purpose of this paper, we will use the American Heritage Dictionary’s definition, which defines feminism as “1) Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. 2) The movement organized around this belief.”
First-wave Feminism is a term that came during second wave feminism. It refers to the suffrage movement that began in the late nineteenth century in the United Kingdom and United States. In the United Kingdom, some women received the right to vote in 1918 and all received the right in 1928. In the United States, the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the right to vote, passed in 1919.
Second-Wave Feminism, which began in the early 1960’s, saw cultural and political inequalities as linked. This movement encouraged women to see how their lives were being politicized by a sexist power structure and it sought equality through the end of discrimination.
Second-wave feminism had two separate branches, each coming from a different background. The first branch derived from the work of women’s activist networks during the New Deal and World War II, and focused on equal rights. The second branch derived from rebellion of civil rights and New Left women, and focused on women’s liberation.
The women active in the first branch of the movement persuaded President Kennedy to establish a Presidential Commission on the Status of Women in 1961. Chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, the commission issued a report in 1963 that called for women to “receive equal pay for comparable work, childcare services, paid maternity leave.” The commission also built a network among existing organizations and made a special effort to include black women. Two continuing federal committees were established and every state had a women’s commission by 1967. This enabled the creation of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966 that was modeled on the NAACP, focusing on equal rights for women in law and employment. NOW’s founding is often attributed to Betty Friedan, but it also involved Pauli Murray, a black lawyer and minister, and Dorothy Haener and Addie Wyatt, labor union representatives. NOW initially set out to get the government to enforce the sex-discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which it accomplished with President Johnson’s 1967 Executive Order prohibiting sex discrimination.
The women’s liberation branch stemmed from civil rights and the New Left. “Its implicit motto was to challenge received wisdoms and hierarchical authorities.” The women in this movement were younger, less professional, had women-only groups and they were radically working for structural change. Women’s Liberation wanted to challenge all the sources of male dominance. This movement attracted women without previous activist experience.
Mary Tyler Moore
The Mary Tyler Moore show began in 1970 and ran for seven seasons. It was a sitcom that focused on the home and work life of the Mary Richards, the main character of the show, played by Mary Tyler Moore. In the first episode, Mary is thirty years old and goes to Minneapolis after leaving the doctor she had been dating for two years, because he reneged on a promise. Once in Minneapolis, she got a job as an Associate Producer at a local television station.
Mary Richards chose to not stay in an unfulfilling relationship at the age of thirty, which was seen as to old for a nice, good woman to be single. She also chose to live alone and support herself with a job, and it was not a secretarial job either, but associate producer at a television station, a field dominated by men. This job was not a substitute or placeholder for marriage; it was a career. She rejects the opportunity to reunite with her ex-boyfriend a couple of episodes into the show, which is key to shaping the way the show will go and what it will be about. Mary is not avoiding men or marriage, but she isn’t going to settle either.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show is given credit for being the first popular television series to clearly have feminist characteristics dominate throughout the show. Mary’s boss, Lou Grant, tells her during the job interview that he was expecting to hire a man for the position, and during the interview asks several personal questions, including age, religion and marriage-status. Mary points out that most of his questions do not relate to her qualifications and he makes a snide comment about her civil rights being violated.
Before Mary showed an independent, confident single woman, it was said that in television land
If women have a profession, it’s usually nursing, where they minister to men. If they are superior to men, it’s because they have magical powers. If they are over 30 years old, they’ve got to be widows, almost always with children, so that they can’t run around enjoying themselves like real people. And they’re guaranteed to be helpless once every fifteen minutes.
This statement from a 1970 issue of Life alludes to the female leads in Julia (1968-71), Bewitched (1964-72), I Dream of Jeannie (1965-70), The Flying Nun (1967-70), and four possibilities (The Doris Day show, Here’s Lucy, The Partridge Family, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir) of widowed mothers. This take on the condition of women in television shows how groundbreaking The Mary Tyler Moore Show was. It took television away from the good housewife and expanded what a single woman was capable of doing. This was one of the major battles feminism was fighting, that women were more than housewives and mothers.
Mary was not the only character in the show to have feminist ideals and beliefs. Phyllis, Mary’s friend that helped her move to Minneapolis, has a master’s degree. She is the only regular female character that is married (although we never see her husband), and she often talks about the sacrifices of marriage, but she does support Mary’s position. Rhoda plays Mary’s neighbor and best friend on the show. She is also a single, thirtyish, workingwoman. While she seems slightly more desperate to find a husband, she is not willing to settle or sacrifice herself. She wants to find the “right” man to be with, but does not show traditional signs of wanting to play the role of a “good wife,” as expressed in the shows mentioned above. The two of them have to deal with the stigma of being single so late in life.
In this scene, there is an added element of what women have to deal with that is never spoken, physical appearance. Having a discussion about the stigma of singleness and how impossible it will be to find a suitable mate is heightened with the setting here, a single woman has got to be thin and in prime shape for this less than enviable “market.”
The Mary Tyler Moore Show started less than a decade after what is considered the beginning of second-wave feminism. It was the first show to demonstrate some of the ideals the movement was presenting. First-wave feminism was largely focused on absolute rights (suffrage) while second wave feminism focused more on issues of equality (discrimination, oppression). The show was able to put a woman into a typical male position and have her succeed, showing that women can do the same jobs as men. Although not fully addressed in the show, it is alluded to that women are suffering from a lower wage for equal work and that this needs to be addressed.
In addition to showing feminist ideals through her character, there are also instances of dialogue that express these beliefs. The twenty-first episode of the first season has a scene where Mary is having drinks with the “boys” from the office. She is accused, in the conversation, of being a typical woman. Lou talks about his wife going back to school “at her age” and getting her master’s and PhD. When Mary asks what’s wrong with that, he states, “I don’t want to be introduced as Mr. and Dr. Grant.” Lou then proposes a toast to “men’s lib, what little we’ve got.” Mary informs them that she can’t drink to that and that she has not agreed to anything they have said. Lou presents this as sides and Mary there’s no one winning, and Lou and his wife are both losing,
The juxtaposition in this scene is quite telling. Although Mary is seated in the middle of the four men, when the men are discussing what turns out to be “Men’s Lib,” the only shots of Mary are of her alone while the men are shown with the each other. Being the only woman in the bar, not just her own group, furthers her isolation. In the end, she still has to rely on the men to get up so she can leave because they have put her in the least accessible and powerful seat.
Even though Mary had some power with her position at the station, when she was put in charge of men there were power struggles.
This scene has some similar juxtaposition as the previous one. Even though Mary is not the only woman in the room, she is the only one clearly seen. She is, once again, mainly in the middle. There is jaw-dropping astonishment that Mary is in charge and she has to have a man get everyone’s attention for her. The only time Mary is shown in front of the men is when she is isolated and the men are a background, and once again the men arguing with her are shown in pairs. The issue of her being in charge never actually gets resolved; it just happens that the boss walks in, “saving the girl.”
The Mary Tyler Moore show was the first step of many that feminism has taken through television. It may not have represented everything feminists wanted to happen in an ideal world, but it opened the door to feminist thinking to a lot of people for the first time. I am sure there are many women and girls that saw what feminism was and could look like through this show.
I argue that the show was instrumental in the feminist movement because it brought feminist ideals into the homes of America for seven years. The idea of working with or for a woman was not quite as foreign after you’ve seen it happening in your living room for
