in a way that was never possible before. In a real sense, television now does not sell programs to viewers but viewers to advertisers, with the programs being only the means to gather those viewers together at a specific time. One of the aspects of the social order reflected by television is gender. Television does not sell gender roles the way it sells viewers to advertisers or soap to viewers. Gender is inherent in the way men and women are portrayed on television, and these roles have changed over the course of television history. In a broad sense, they have changed to reflect shifts in gender roles in society at large, but at the same time, it is believed that television's portrayals have helped to shape those roles and continue to do so. In the 1950s, the nuclear family was widely represented in situation comedy, while in contemporary television programming, divided families, single-parent families, and non-traditional families vie with the nuclear family for television time. Gender is also represented in the advertising, and this can often be more problematic. Commercials have as their object selling products, and they generally treat all viewers as malleable clay to be shaped into the sort of buyer desired. Children are particularly vulnerable to advertising for products of interest to them and pick up messages about gender roles from characters and situations in commercials as in programs.
Changes in television portrayals of women reflect changes in women's roles in society. More and more women have been entering the job market in the years since World War II. This trend was noted by 1960, but the size of the trend was underestimated. By the mid-1970s, women had entered the job market at rates not expected to be reached until the mid-1980s, and it was reported then that nearly 48 percent of American women over sixteen years of age either worked or wanted a job. Numerous reasons were given for this, including a g...