growing number of young single women looking for their first jobs, newly divorced women with little or no income from their former husbands, women whose husbands did not earn enough so that the family needed a second salary, and women from higher income families who had a desire for broader horizons as a primary reason for working. Also cited for this rise was the liberation of young wives in the 1960s with economic liberation and effective birth control methods (Lindsey 139-140).
Joseph R. Dominick reports on a study of the portrayal of women in prime time between 1953 and 1977, extending from the beginnings of the television situation comedy to the era of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It was found in this 1979 study that the number of women in starring roles remained relatively constant over the 25-year period studied. The number of women shown as housewives or housekeepers had declined over this period, but the makeup of the television labor force consistently demonstrated no relationship to the real-life
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