The effect of gender roles on television have been considered in recent years by sociologists and psychologists as well as media critics, in part based on a concern that the way women are portrayed in the media has a deleterious effect on the way women are viewed in society at large. Women's roles in society have been changing through the determined efforts of feminists and sympathetic political groups over the past two decades, and some of these changes are clearly reflected on television, in film, and in other media portrayals. At the same time, it is evident that progress in changing media portrayals is behind the curve as far as the degree of equality that should be depicted, the roles given to women in the media, and the roles women play behind the scenes in the media as well. Some areas of the media are more regressive than others in this regard, and a prime example, and one with a major influence over the young, is MTV, whose rock videos portray women as sex objects, often in violent and demeaning situations, and rarely in positions of power or authority.
For most of history women were expected to be content with a secondary social position, and in part family structure and the requirements of carving out a living in a difficult world contributed to this social structure. Clearly, circumstances of family life have changed in the modern era. Industry has been taken out of the home, and large families are no longer economically possible or socially desired. The home is no longer the center of the husband's life, and for the traditional wife there is only a narrowing of interests and possibilities for development: "Increasingly, the woman finds herself without an occupation and with an unsatisfactory emotional life." The change in sex roles that can be discerned in society is closely tied with changes in the structure of the family. Sociologists recognize that women have roles in the family and roles in public life,...