Gender Representation in Mad Men

Gender representation is how men or women are portrayed in the media. In Mad Men we are able to witness a series of events, which allows us to see how both genders are portrayed in that period of time.

In Mad Men season 1 episode 1, we are thrown into how women are seen in the workplace. Not surprisingly the men had the authoritative positions in the work place, for example the ad men and CEO of companies were men. This shows that during the 1900's there existed a very patriarchal society. Don Draper was enraged by the idea of women who wanted to do business with him in the office. It was uncommon for women to take lead roles. Instead they would take a more secretariat role in the office. This job allowed us the audience see the extent of extreme gender representation in the workplace. In  Mad Men, secretary's would encourage others to adopt more of a sex appeal in the work place. One worker points out that if Peggy was lucky she could go from working in the city to living in the countryside. From this we can infer that women needed to sell themselves in the workplace to the higher earning men in order to get married. In order to do this women would have to lower their standards, which included shorter skirts.

In this episode, objectifying women was one of the key issue. Men would see women as objects to have sex with. In one of the scenes Pete Campbell was in the strip club trying to talk to women. Quickly the scene escalated when Pete gave her the hint by touching her leg without consent. This shows the disrespect he had for women. The women stood up for herself and left Pete. Not all men were stereotypical towards women. In one of the scenes Pete Campbell complained to Don Draper that he always gets the new secretaries whilst eyeing Peggy Olson up and down. Here we see Pete objectifying Peggy as a new toy that Draper has acquired. Draper then defended Peggy and fought against the objectification. 

We clearly see the diverse levels of stereotypical views that each character has. Draper has respect but isn't willing to do business with a women of high authority. On the other hand, Pete has no respect for women. Another example of this is at the end of the episode. Pete, who is due to be married went and slept with Peggy. In this scene we see the men had no respect for their partners and felt because they are in control they could do anything.In conclusion, it is evident that people lived in a very patriarchal society. Men were the breadwinners and women were objectified. Most men though they could control women and look down upon them. Some would speak up and some would add insult to injury. Mad Men season 1 episode 1 had very bad gender representation.