Review: <i>Producing Feminism: Television Work in the Age of Women’s Liberation</i>, by Jennifer S. Clark

For decades, scholars have studied the relationship between women’s liberation and television in the United States, but the literature typically falls into one of two categories. The first analyzes representations of women as evidence of television’s ability to update content and appeal to more politically engaged viewers. The second considers the impact of feminist media-reform activists who work outside of the industry. In Producing Feminism, Jennifer S. Clark does not discredit either approach, but instead employs a production studies framework to examine the workplace and “the worker herself” to understand the often unrecognized, and less visible, ways the women’s movement altered television (4–5).A central concern of the book is the author’s dissatisfaction with the way feminism’s impact on television has been measured. Viewing changes in television content and increased on-screen images of women as indicators of feminism’s influence, for example, does not reflect the experiences of women workers in the industry. Furthermore, employment statistics taken from “press releases, formalized policies, and statistical reports,” all of which can be manipulated for industry self-promotion, fail to expose the institutional barriers, exploitation, and poor treatment that many women in television faced historically and still face today (6). Through the study of archived production materials and corporate network operation records, in addition to numerous journalistic and oral interviews, Clark analyzes the experiences and actions of women who worked in the television industry and challenged its gendered politics.Clark marks 1970 as the origin point of television’s relationship with women’s liberation, and although she claims that the connection between the two never ended (as evidenced by the recent #MeToo movement), the book focuses on the 1970s, with four chapters offering a series of case studies. This choice allows Clark to make two contributions to the historiography: She provides an alternative story of how feminists influenced television’s practices and eventually programming, and she also explains how implicit sexism continued to exist in the television industry despite the rise of modern feminism.Each chapter foregrounds “women who challenged sexism through the workplaces of corporate network headquarters, local stations, public broadcasting centers, independent production companies, and network production departments” (155). Clark begins the book with a study of the myriad “women’s groups” that developed between 1971 and 1973 at NBC, ABC, and CBS. The groups consisted of creative and clerical personnel who wanted to improve the relationships between company executives and women workers and shape company policies to create more equitable workplaces (the latter was often accomplished through legal action). The remaining chapters focus on how different women actualized their feminist visions for television’s possibilities. Chapter 2 focuses on professional tennis player Billie Jean King and ABC Sports producer Eleanor Sanger Riger. Both women shaped how television would envision women’s sports and saw its potential to promote equality, professional satisfaction, and empowerment for women. Chapter 3 turns its attention to women who worked for the producer and head of Tandem / TAT Productions Norman Lear. Focusing on Lear’s cult series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976–1977) and All that Glitters (1977), Clark argues that it was feminist writers, producers, and consultants who cultivated and sustained Lear’s signature style. Chapter 4 focuses on short-lived regional television programs that employed women behind the scenes and on screen, and on those who created this programming for women viewers. An epilogue discusses the institutionalized sexism that continues to exist in television, which Clark credits to the continued emphasis on representation to determine women’s inclusion. Historically and today, representation has been privileged over implementing meaningful solutions to address gender inequalities in the workplace.Clark’s analysis of the institutionalized sexism embedded in television production and the ways in which feminists led the charge in changing company policies, workplace culture, and programming is convincing, but how women of color contributed to this workplace reform is less clear. In chapter 1, for example, Clark focuses on the Women’s Advisory Council (WAC) at CBS and acknowledges that White women typically occupied more visible parts of the workforce. Grounding her research in WAC’s organizational records, Clark acknowledges their limitations in disclosing members’ identities and how they participated in this women’s group but notes that Black women were hesitant to join WAC because CBS viewed “minority” problems as separate from women’s issues. Nevertheless, Clark draws the conclusion that because the group prioritized the needs of secretaries and other support staff—jobs that women of color occupied at a high rate—“WAC implicitly addressed intersectional issues of race and gender at CBS” (40). It may be true that WAC advocated for secretaries and support staff, many of whom were women of color, but that does not mean that the White women of WAC did so because they thought about race and gender in intersectional terms.A similar critique can be made about chapter 4. In her analysis of three local public affairs programs created by women for women audiences, Clark discusses Black feminist responses to one show in particular, Yes, We Can. The author includes the insights of Arniece Russell and Dr. Dorothy Hyde, who critiqued Yes, We Can for “universalizing women’s experiences and needs” without considering how racism and sexism were interconnected (147). Clark thus includes the critical analysis of Black feminists in the 1970s, yet she is less forthright in her own critical analysis of the show’s limitations and the women who worked behind the camera and on screen. One might also ask how Black women contributed to the production of Yes, We Can and other public affairs programming.The book’s strength is Clark’s analysis of how women challenged industry assumptions about feminized television and the interests of women audiences. In chapter 2, for example, she focuses on Eleanor Sanger Riger as the first woman producer at ABC Sports. ABC hired Riger in response to feminist protests of the network’s sexist employment practices, although feminists dismissed sports as potentially meaningful to women athletes, viewers, and the overall women’s movement. Yet, Riger advocated for female athletes as talent worth airing, created new programming for women’s sports, and trained women to become on-air announcers. Furthermore, in chapter 3, Clark considers how gendered labor, such as writing efficiency and increased levels of productivity from working on soap operas, contributed to the creation of “relevant” television that became the bedrock of Norman Lear’s Tandem Productions. In what is perhaps the strongest chapter of the book, Clark centers the work of Ann Marcus as head writer of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and co-creator of All That Glitters. Marcus’s experience working in soap operas for over a decade influenced Mary Hartman’s melodrama and use of soap opera conventions that made the series successful. Despite critics of television who associated its “downfall” with diminished male ingenuity that came from creating mindless, ratings-driven television, Clark argues that it was actually “women’s culture, knowledge, stories, and energies” that played a part in television’s “salvation.” While Lear is credited for saving television’s integrity, Clark shows that it was women who contributed to these shows’ success. This chapter contributes to the growing historiography that seeks to challenge the master narrative of 1970s auteurism that centers men as singular producers of artistic achievement.Despite the few critiques noted above, Producing Feminism is an excellent interdisciplinary study that challenges our understanding of the history of feminism and role media workplaces play in the politics of television. Clark’s focus on women laborers and their influence on cultural production does more than explain the television industry of the past; it sheds light on the continuity of sexism in the workplace that continue into the twenty-first century.