9 series available on Netflix that every woman should watch

You may have read something about the entertainment industry being a bit sexist when it comes to assigning roles to women.

All too often (unfortunately), the roles assigned to actresses correspond to stereotyped characters, such as the jealous girlfriend, the pretty neighbor or the inconvenient mother-in-law.

It is not for nothing that we need separate award categories for actors and actresses, after all, the densest and richest roles are usually written to be played by men, with prominent roles reserved for women being much rarer.

Despite this, we are not completely abandoned. While Hollywood still gives much more prominence to men, shows are moving towards being more inclusive and representative of the female gender.

With that in mind, here are 10 series available on Netflix that feature complex and nuanced female characters, just like real-life women. It’s worth watching!

1. Orange is the New Black

The series has as its main character Piper Chapman, an upper-middle-class New Yorker who is arrested for a crime committed 10 years ago. In prison, she has to live with women of different origins and ages, and a completely new universe appears in her life.

OITNB dedicates several of its episodes to tell the story of other inmates, showing the family reality of poor, black, Latino, oriental and homosexual women. There is even a transgender character in the series.

2.Grace and Frankie

Grace and Frankie is a series about two 70-year-old women whose husbands reveal that they have been in a relationship for 20 years. From this revelation, the two must resume their lives with the help of each other.

The series shows situations often experienced by older women, such as invisibility before society and denial of their sexuality.

3. Scandal

Olivia Pope is the owner of a crisis management company and, above all, a woman who knows her role very well: powerful, confident and unafraid to impose her opinions.

A good example for when we feel cornered at work simply because we are women.

4. How to Get Away with Murder

In this series, the highly acclaimed actress Viola Davis plays Annalize Keating, a university professor of Criminal Law – a discipline she herself dubbed “How to Get Away with Murder”, something like “How to Get Away After Committing Murder”.

In the plot, the teacher and a group of students are involved in a murder that leaves the academic community in an uproar.

5. Homeland

In Homeland, CIA agent Carrie Mathinson specializes in terrorism in the Middle East. She is certain that Nicholas Brody, a national hero, actually has ties to the terrorists and is organizing an attack on the US.

As she tries to prove the allegations, the CIA and those around Carrie begin to distrust her emotional stability – pretty typical, isn’t it?

6. The Crown

The Corwn simply tells the story of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, monarch of the United Kingdom. The series shows the challenges faced by the young queen when having to assume the throne at the age of 25, after the death of her father, King George VI.

7. Modern Family

Women don’t necessarily need to work outside the home to be strong. In Modern Family, you will follow the life of three interrelated families, with the comic and dramatic moments of each family.

Claire is a housewife and mother of three who sometimes tries to get back into the workforce. In some episodes, she is shown to be involved with the welfare of the neighborhood. Gloria, on the other hand, is a beautiful Latina woman and the second wife of a much older man. Her conflicts involve her Latinity and being frequently asked about her feelings towards her husband. Also worthy of mention is the teenager Alex, a brilliant student.

8. Bones

Bones tells the story of competent forensic anthropologist Temperance “Bones” Brenna, who works at the Jeffersonian Institute and writes detective novels in her spare time. Temperance is required whenever the police are unable to identify the victim of crime using traditional techniques, such as when the body is in an advanced state of decomposition.
Temperance is inspired by the life of Kathy Reichs, a forensic anthropologist and writer.

9. Jane the Virgin

As a child, Jane was instructed by her grandmother that she must keep her virginity at all costs until marriage. However, at the age of 23, Jane finds her life turned into a complete mess when she becomes pregnant because of an artificial insemination made by mistake.

The series is full of three-dimensional female characters who, in addition to caring about their love life, also face challenges related to finances, career and health, like the rest of us.

The list above features some series where we find female characters more richly constructed than average, showing women who have other concerns than finding the perfect match – not that our relationships aren’t important, but we women have other concerns too.

This doesn’t mean the shows are necessarily feminist (even some of them have been criticized for not being so representative of all minorities), but it’s worth taking a look at the three-dimensional roles assigned to women.