A No-Progress Report on Women in TV : Gender gap: A study shows that despite 20 years of feminism, places for women before and behind the camera are still lacking.

Most of the women shown on television’s prime-time entertainment series are under 40, white and work as clerks, home makers or helpmates to male lead characters, according to a study released Wednesday by two women’s organizations.

At the same time, the study found that despite more than 20 years of feminism, the number of women in the ranks of prime-time producers, directors and writers remains far below their presence in the work force. At ABC, only 8% of the producers of the programs examined for the study were women, compared to 16% at NBC, 20% at CBS and 26% at Fox.

“I was very shocked at how low the employment numbers are,” said Sally Steenland, who compiled the study results and interviewed network executives on behalf of the National Commission on Working Women and Women in Film. “I expected that by this time they would be much higher.”

The organizations’ conclusions were based on an examination of 80 prime-time network entertainment series aired during a two-month period last spring. Information was gathered on the gender, age, race, occupation, marital and socio-economic status of recurring characters.

ABC, NBC, and CBS declined to comment on the study, saying that they had not seen it yet it. Dennis Petroskey, a spokesman for Fox, said, “While we may be better by comparison, we still don’t think it’s good enough and we will be doing better.”

The study found that with exceptions such as NBC’s “L.A. Law” and ABC’s “China Beach,” the women in dramatic series were not strong characters.

“Women characters, whether they appear weekly or in a guest shot, can assist male heroism, but never overshadow it,” Steenland wrote in the report’s conclusions. “Most often, women stand by and wait.”

Overall, fewer than half of all characters were women, with male characters outnumbering female by almost two to one in dramas. Out of 35 dramas studied, only one, “Murder, She Wrote,” had a female lead.

“The networks can all point to strong female characters, but they all point to the same ones,” Steenland said, citing Candice Bergen’s Murphy Brown as an example. “But when you finish naming them, you run out. When you look for women in dramas, there are none at all, except as happy sidekicks.”

While more women were shown in a professional capacity than in the past, the study said, they were still commonly found scantily clad and victimized by gratuitous violence.

Steenland believes that the continued stereotypical portrayals of women are linked to the lack of women calling the shots.

Male producers “like being around naked beautiful women all day,” an unnamed female production executive was quoted as saying in the study.

But apparently not all of the blame lies with men. For example, it was a female producer who told Steenland that shows about adolescent boys are more compelling than shows about girls.

“Teen-age boys are inherently more interesting than girls,” the producer said. “They go through rites of passage. Basically, only one thing happens as a girl grows up--she tries to be pretty so boys will like her.”

The most common female job portrayed during the two months studied, the report said, was clerical, with 14% of the women characters working as secretaries, receptionists and clerks. Another 14% were employed in other service jobs such as waitress and bank teller. Only 5% of women were shown as entrepreneurs.

Television portrayed 11% of women as full-time homemakers, an increase from the early 1980s, but a decrease over the 1950s and ‘60s, when most women were shown as housewives, it said.

Women were not the only ones whose roles were exaggerated on television, according to the study: 26% of the male characters studied were shown as police officers, making that job the most common among men. Ten percent were shown in the legal profession, compared to 7% of women.

Economically, the status of women on television was much better than in real life. Women were more likely than men to be portrayed as wealthy, and less likely to be portrayed as working class. Sixteen percent of women, compared to 13% of men, were affluent, while 16% of men and 12% of women were working class. Three-quarters of all characters were middle class, and virtually none was poor.

Minorities on television were overwhelmingly portrayed as black, with slightly more than 1% each shown as Hispanic and Asian, and slightly less than 1% as Native American, according to the study. There are as many extra-terrestrial aliens on TV as Hispanic women and men, it concluded.

WOMEN EMPLOYED IN PRIME-TIME SERIES

Networks Ranked by Percentage of Women Producers

FOX: 26%

CBS: 20%

NBC: 16%

ABC: 8%

Networks Ranked by Percentage of Women Writers

FOX: 33%

CBS: 29%

NBC: 22%

ABC: 22%

Source: National Commission on Working Women of Wider Opportunities for Women