Businesswomen on-screen are wonderful feminist representations of powerful women trying their best in a man’s world. Sometimes they fail and sometimes they succeed; sometimes they are capable and sometimes they are astoundingly incapable. Nonetheless, the portrayal of businesswomen on TV remains a feminist one, because it defines women apart from men, showing them as full human beings whose identity is not based around the patriarchal model.
Some of TV’s best businesswomen are also some of TV’s most unlawful characters, yet audiences love them, because of their independence, feistiness and willfulness. They are hope-filled characters that present the idea that any woman can become a businesswoman if she puts her mind to it.
Sophia Petrillo (The Golden Girls)
The most streetwise of The Golden Girls, Sophia Petrillo is the Sicilian and New Yorkian always trying to make a buck. She complains about her allowance from her daughter, steals money from Dorothy, and then misspends her money. Sophia tries to come up with inventive ways to make some money on the side for her various hobbies. She once opened a home-run cafe, selling “bacon, lettuce and potato” sandwiches to construction workers.
Another time, she barely skated the law by promising different men a date with her daughter to get some premium discounts from local businesses, essentially becoming Dorothy’s pimp. In The Golden Girls’ spin-off, The Golden Palace, Sophia fulfills her dreams legally and opens a hotel with Blanche and Rose.
Shirley Bennett (Community)
Shirley Bennett started off as a quiet mother of two whose confidence was shattered after her husband cheated on her. She enrolls at Greendale Community College to try to make something more of herself. In the process, she opens a café and sandwich front in the heart of the college’s student union.
Shirley is proven to be a shrewd businesswoman, whose baked treats are a hit among the students. Known for carrying her bag around her like a shield, Shirley’s financial success is subtly signaled when she swaps her ordinary handbag for a designer version.
Jan Levinson (The Office)
Jan Levinson is a classic character of The Office. She begins the show at one of the top positions of the Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company, working through corporate with swift business precision. She is portrayed as tough and even heartless, threatening the staff at the Scranton branch with job losses and a lawsuit should they form a union to protect themselves.
Soon, Jan’s tough exterior unravels, and she decides to pursue her self-destructive side, as advised by her therapist. She ends up dating Michael Scott, out of a job, and hilariously trying to sell candles to support herself financially.
Ilana Wexler (Broad City)
Ilana Wexler is a free-spirited woman who cannot be tied down by the rules of corporate America. She is feisty, loud and loves to think outside the box. Living in New York in her 20s, Ilana often makes money through odd jobs and the gig economy. She is also very skilled at using her brains to create pop-up businesses. Her people skills enable her to turn her businesses into successes.
In one episode, she creates an outdoor office for career people who need a smoking-allowed café. Her business booms within the space of a few hours, and she becomes such a threat that her competitors offer to buy her out.
Linda Belcher (Bob’s Burgers)
While Bob is the creative and culinary force behind Bob’s Burgers, Linda is the brains and financial wiz. Together, the couple run the town’s local artisanal burger place, not having much financial success, but managing to keep their heads above water. Linda’s indispensability to the restaurant is revealed when she gets a job at a local supermarket, leaving Bob bereft, unable to understand how to balance the restaurant’s bills and loans.
Linda is also an example of a fun boss, although her lax attitude as a business manager soon sees customers walking out of the supermarket with trolleys full of free food.
Grace (Grace And Frankie)
Grace was born for business. The woman who began her company, Say Grace, in her garage has the exact personality needed to be successful in the business world. Say Grace is a cosmetics brand that resonated deep with American women, and Grace soon became a national competitor to other international brands.
Later on, it is discovered that Grace unwittingly stole one of her signature scents from another company. Despite this, Grace is undeterred, even managing to open another highly successful company in her 70s, once again catering to the needs of women in the country.
Malory Archer (Archer)
Malory Archer is a cut-throat slave laborer, with a distinct thirst for wealth, at all costs. When she is not indulging her meaningless rivalry with fellow socialite, Trudy Beekman, Malory can be found exploring other ways to make more money – be it legally or illegally.
Malory has foraged into such business activities as smuggling illegal immigrants in the country in convoys, stealing her employees’ entire 401k, but leaving hers untouched, and running a spy agency without any legal permissions or licenses from the government. Her more legal endeavors include marrying rich men for money, refusing to pay her employees a living wage, and leasing out her property to a former pimp gone straight.
Miss. Rabbit (Peppa Pig)
Miss. Rabbit, with no exaggeration, works most of the jobs in town. She operates a gift store on the moon, owns her own shoe shop, sells ice cream on hot days, owns her own smoothie bar, owns her own china shop, is a fighter, a nurse, a librarian, a face painter, a rescue helicopter pilot, a dental nurse, airport check-in staff and cabin crew member, boating lake attendant, and supermarket checkout staff.
Her other business ventures include her ice cream shop, her ski hire business, her Hall of Mirrors business, and her recycling plant. How Miss. Rabbit finds the time to run so many businesses and have so many side jobs remains, as of yet, unexplained.
Ronnie Lee (Schitt’s Creek)
Ronnie Lee is the local councilwoman of Schitt’s Creek. She also runs her own construction business on the side. Ronnie is so committed to advancing her own business and the businesses of other women in the area, that she chairs a local businesswomen group in Schitt’s Creek.
She is an excellent construction worker, who handles creating artistic interior designs for her clients. In her position as councilwoman, Ronnie is also a very adept worker, if grumpy. The people of Schitt’s Creek clearly trust her to elect her as a leading official, and Ronnie takes her position seriously.
Jacqueline White (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt)
An upper-class socialite who married into her extreme wealth, Jacqueline knows how to play the game to win it. Jacqueline was born to farmers in middle America and faked her way into an extremely wealthy lifestyle in New York by studying how the elite act and modeling herself to fit that mold.
After her husband cheats on her in retaliation for turning 40, Jacqueline is left feeling powerless and worthless. With Kimmy’s help, she soon starts a successful charity before moving on to create her own business using her best skillset: faking it until she makes it.
