There's a piece in Slate today about how in rural India, newly-available cable TV programs featuring strong, educated, working female characters are having an effect on the attitudes of local women. Although something in the tone of the piece annoys — one suspects that the writer, Joel Waldfogel, is kind of an emosogynist, and he's a little patronizing, like the TV shows are really "helpful" to the poor village people whose attitudes "remain, shall we say, traditional" — it's hard not to be awed when he says that, for instance, 62 percent of women in the study believed that spousal beating was acceptable before they got cable, but after two years of watching popular shows like Because a Mother-in-Law Was Once a Daughter-in-Law that number fell by about 10 percent. Maybe they should syndicate Girls Next Door in India next. If they're "lucky", their society will end up just like ours!

TV is Good For You, If You Are A Woman In Rural India, At Least [Slate]

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