The Power Of Women Top TV Shows Featuring More Women In Leadership Roles

At “Chicago Hope,” CBS’ very high-powered hospital, Kathryn Austin, the austere, brilliant cardiac surgeon played by Christine Lahti, is exerting a lot more influence than is common for women in major hospitals, first as acting chief of staff and soon as chief of surgery.

In NBC’s “Homicide” division, Megan Russert, played by Isabella Hofmann, has been promoted to captain, a position so rare for women that Philadelphia, with 6,100 police officers, has only six among its 107 captains.

The top cops on NBC’s “Law & Order” and Fox’s “New York Undercover” are also women.

In the land of sitcoms, the lead characters on “Almost Perfect” (CBS) are cementing a romantic relationship while gingerly coping with the fact that she makes a lot more money as the executive producer of a television cop show than he makes as a district attorney.

All over the tube these days, women earn more than men and give them orders from positions they are only beginning to attain in real life. And, as often happens in real life, their promotions are creating animosity, jealousy and angst.

In doing these shows, television is exploring some of the more ticklish sex issues of the time, and doing it in ways that are often informative as well as entertaining. Further, given the impact of the medium, it is almost certain that once television explores an issue, so does society at large.

Female bosses have been seen on television before, of course, starting with Lynn Bari, who owned a construction company in a forgettable 1952 bauble called “Boss Lady.” There was Miss Kitty, “Gunsmoke’s” owner of the Long Branch Saloon, and now there is “Ellen,” whose title character owns a bookstore.

And for such women as Murphy Brown and Mary Richards, the Mary Tyler Moore character of the early ‘70s, work is certainly serious business.

But, said Cary O’Dell, archives director for the Museum of Broadcast Communication in Chicago, “the numbers are much higher now. Part of that has to do with life and part with demographics. A lot of women head households now and the networks don’t have to appeal just to men” to buy advertisers’ products.

Patricia Green, the consulting producer and a top writer on “Chicago Hope,” and Robin Schiff, a creator and executive producer of “Almost Perfect,” made the same point in discussing their female characters.

“Advertisers and networks are beginning to appreciate the female market again,” said Green. “Young males were the flavor of the month before.”

Schiff agreed: “Television is advertiser-driven. Advertisers desire women. The female audience is really key to shows’ working. That means women like to watch themselves - and watch themselves be strong and articulate.”

What distinguishes the current women characters is that “instead of giving women titles and then making light of them, we see now they earn those titles and demonstrate why they earn those positions,” said Laurie Crumpacker, dean of arts and sciences at Susquehanna College in Selinsgrove, Pa., who has studied television’s portrayal of women. “These women prove every week that they deserve to be in the jobs they’re in.”

Crumpacker and others said that any list of cutting-edge television women must include some who are unusually forceful, independent or charismatic, even if they’ve never achieved particular professional status. Among them are such characters of the past as “Cagney and Lacey” and the elderly “Golden Girls” and the still very current “Roseanne.”

“Roseanne is refreshingly not gentrified or yuppified,” said Crumpacker. “She’s folks. It’s just refreshing that she can be so strong and so unabashedly her own woman.”

But the professionals, such as Russert in “Homicide,” are moving into different social territory. However talented Russert is, her promotion raised immediate questions about the political motives behind it.

Characteristically for issues addressed on the series, a taut Barry Levinson creation, this one was given added complexity and drama because it was raised by a black man, Lt. Al Giardello, played by Yaphet Kotto.

“No offense intended,” Giardello, who has far more experience, says to Russert after the appointment is made. “But this is ridiculous and you know it. They say we work by the merit system. Race and anatomy mean more than merit around here.”

Says Russert: “I’d like to think that I earned this promotion because of my record. But I know damn well it’s because I’m a woman. This department is getting so politically correct, it’s scaring me.”

“The idea,” Tom Fontana, an executive producer of the show, said in an interview, “was to promote her, and to put her deeper into the politics of how cities are run, and remove her from the day-to-day being a cop. And then to see the effect on a character.

“This allows us an opportunity to write about whether Russert was promoted because of ability or gender - and that’s what haunts her in every episode.”

One effect is already clear: Her promotion has disturbed the close, friendly relationship she had with Giardello when both were lieutenants.

“Chicago Hope” has become the setting for a simmering battle of the sexes between Kathryn Austin, Lahti’s character, and Aaron Shutt, another world-class surgeon, played by Adam Arkin.

The two were in an incipient romance when she was named acting chief of staff. Tension developed almost immediately. When they disagreed about some experimental treatment that Shutt wanted for one of his patients, things came to a head.

Green, the “Chicago Hope” consulting producer, said the Austin character appeared because “we all thought the show was boy-heavy” and were talking about a strong female character when Lahti herself called to suggest a role she wanted to play.

“We brought her in to play this surgeon, and we always planned to move her up. We wanted to show what women have to go through to be a top cardiac surgeon. It’s a total male-dominated atmosphere.”

Why does she think so many women are now being written into shows as major achievers? “More are becoming show writers on dramas,” she said. “It used to be you could count them on one hand.”