The Feminization of British Television and the Re-traditionalization of Gender

Abstract

This article explores shifts that have taken place in British television and British forms of feminine- gendered fiction from the late 1990s. These shifts will be discussed with reference to discourses of the “feminization of television” circulating in British culture during this period. This article contests the suggestion that discourses of the “feminization of television” and texts such as the female ensemble drama produced in this postfeminist period represent unproblematic “narratives of progress” for women (Georgina Harris 2006, Beyond Representation: Television Drama and the Politics of Identity, Manchester University Press, Manchester, p. 1). Rather, this article will suggest that accounts of the “feminization of television” found in the popular press along with contemporary examples of the female ensemble drama re-traditionalize women in relation to the spaces and discourses associated with twentieth-century femininity.