When looking at this season's fall TV lineup, one cultural trend is incredibly clear: women rule.
Since the start of the most recent feminist movement in the 1970s, it has been common for female-led shows to dominate their timeslots, both critically and in viewership.
"United States of Tara," starring Toni Collette, "The Good Wife," starring Julianna Margulies and "Parks and Recreation" starring Amy Poehler and many others all feature actresses in powerful roles working to get something accomplished.
Other shows, like "Law and Order: SVU" show women stepping beyond the gender line and making a difference in a job traditionally occupied by men.
New shows this season are also capitalizing on the "girls rule" idea, like NBC's "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea" with Laura Prepon starring as Chelsea Newman, an outspoken bartender.
Similarly, ABC is bringing back "Charlie's Angels" and continuing the theme of butt-kicking females with "Missing," a show starring Ashley Judd as a former CIA agent tracking down her son who has gone missing years after her husband's suspicious death. On a different thread, the CW is launching "Heart of Dixie," with Rachel Bilson starring as a hot shot New York doctor who inherits a medical practice in a small Alabama town and has to learn how to balance her ambition with her compassion for treating patients.
But it's not just female-dominated plots coming to screens this year. Another common storyline is men trying to keep up with the rise of leading women in their home lives and in society.
On CBS, David Hornsby stars as a magazine editor who needs to become more manly or he will lose his job in "How to Be a Gentleman."
On ABC, Tim Allen plays a dad trying to assert his manhood in "Last Man Standing." ABC is going all in on this theme, because it also has "Man Up," in which three men try to figure out how to survive as a modern man, and "Work It," where two men turn to cross-dressing to find work as pharmaceutical salespeople and discover what it really means to be a man in the process.
But all of this has justification in the real world. A 2009 report from the Families and Work Institute shows that by 2016, women will earn 60 percent of the bachelor's degrees, 63 percent of the master's degrees and 54 percent of doctoral degrees in America. To put that in perspective, in the 1970-71 school year, men earned 94 percent of all degrees. In the preview for "Work It," this phenomenon is referred to as the "mancession."
And as times change, television changes along with it. The only question is, how will audiences react? Yes, the report confirmed that people are less likely to agree that men should earn income while women stay at home with children, but will this modern perspective bring high viewership?
Only time will tell.