Starting in the 2010s, women played an increasingly prominent and complex role in the scripted television landscape of the United States. But did TV become more feminist in content and form? Or did the shows just seem more feminist because women took up more prominent positions?

Jessica Ford examines popular media’s tendency to apply the feminist label to all women-centric TV. Focusing on the post-Sex and the City era that began in 2005, Ford explores how women-centric scripted TV absorbed the feminisms of its past. It now televises these feminisms in divergent, diffuse, and distinct ways that find expression as a sensibility rather than a cogent politic, genre, or category. Ford’s analysis examines shows identified as feminist alongside programs that negotiate ideas, offer critiques, generate feelings and sentiments, and deploy aesthetics in both low-key and visible political ways.

Innovative and insightful, Televising Feminism looks at the construction and expression of the many feminisms at work on American scripted television.

Jessica Ford is a senior lecturer in media at Adelaide University, Australia.