ABSTRACT
This chapter examines gender representation in Broadway musicals over a 75-year period by exploring their female characters, specifically in regard to their quality. It examines what the numbers reveal about larger trends regarding gender representation in the Broadway musical over time. Thus, the musical theater data that might initially be interpreted as revealing a disheartening trend of stagnancy in the numbers regarding female employment in fact consistently show that women characters on Broadway had jobs far more often than their real-life counterparts. The percentages of musicals that pass the jobs test but not the Bechdel test were remarkably consistent as well. Original numbers fall shy of the 53% of films that passed the Bechdel test when analyzing film, according to Smith. While it can be argued that the Bechdel test is too simplistic, and its threshold too low, the test does bring to the forefront “where feminism ‘begins,’” according to feminist theater scholar Elaine Aston.
