ABSTRACT
Since researchers first identified the quintessential consumer as female and between the ages of 18 and 35, television has pandered to women, promoting a vision of the good life in which they play a key part and feeding an obsession with youth, affluence, beauty and glamor. Yet, in another way, the position of women has similarities with that of other minority groups-and I use the word once more to refer to power rather than numbers. Historically, women on both sides of the Atlantic and, indeed, in most parts of the world, have been regarded as bearers and rearers of children, oriented to domestic work and having no significant role to play in society’s major institutions, such as politics, commerce and education. The family has been seen as the woman’s domain: here she is in her element, nurturing, caring, comforting. All important interpersonal functions. But not ones which, conventional wisdom dictates, change the direction of society.
