Which is the most feminist show on TV and why?
Feminism isn’t a competition, nor is it something that can be quantified within the complicated realm of entertainment. Yet the conversation around television shows that engage seriously with women’s issues and equality has only grown since the late 2010s. Surface-level nods to empowerment remain easy to spot, but the stronger examples still stand out for their depth, their willingness to center marginalized voices, and their refusal to flatten women into symbols.
The original list of contenders has aged in telling ways. Several series reached their final seasons years ago, while newer entries have stepped into the same debates about power, representation, and solidarity. The question remains worth asking: which show best captures a feminist perspective that holds up under scrutiny?
The Handmaid’s Tale
The Hulu adaptation wrapped with Season 6 in spring 2025. Its final run confirmed what earlier seasons had already established: this remains one of the most sustained examinations of systemic control over women’s bodies and autonomy on American television. The series ended with its cultural status intact, still referenced in protests and commentary as a symbol of feminist resistance even when later seasons drew mixed responses for pacing and tone.
Critics have long noted how the show illustrates the mechanisms of gendered oppression and the ways some women collude with it for personal gain. That core argument has not shifted with the conclusion of the series. The show’s influence now sits alongside its direct sequel, which continues the same universe from a new generation’s vantage point.
The Bold Type
The series concluded after five seasons, yet its emphasis on female friendship as infrastructure still registers. The show placed three young women at the center of a glossy magazine world and tracked how their support for one another intersected with questions of race, sexuality, and ambition. Its willingness to stage frank conversations about queer intimacy, including an explicit scene between Kat and Adena, distinguished it from many network contemporaries.
According to TV Guide, the courage the characters draw upon to face struggles head-on stems at least partially from the sense of empowerment and security they get from knowing their best friends will be by their side no matter what. That framing of solidarity as practical rather than purely inspirational gave the series a sharper edge than its glossy surface suggested.
Orange is the New Black
The prison dramedy finished its run in 2019 after seven seasons. Its legacy rests on the range of women it placed at the center of the narrative and the refusal to soften their edges for audience comfort. Kate Mulgrew described the experience to The Guardian as liberating and scary and invigorating because every female character was allowed to be unapologetic and authentic.
The series also gave sustained attention to the conditions faced by incarcerated women and the profit motives behind private prisons. In reclaiming marginalized people’s experience from the erasure that prison imposes, it moved beyond the usual procedural focus on guards and wardens to center the women living inside the system.
Riverdale
The CW series ended after seven seasons. Its feminist credentials were always tied less to overt messaging than to the way it reworked the original Archie comics’ tendency to pit Betty and Veronica against each other. W Magazine observed that the show addressed the misogynistic worldview of the source material by giving the female characters complex arcs that existed beyond their relationships to the male leads.
The young women of Riverdale were frequently shown working together against pervasive sexism and, occasionally, against literal threats like the local serial killer. That approach subverted the beautiful dead girl trope that many crime-leaning shows still default to when handling female characters.
Broad City
The Comedy Central series concluded in 2019. Its reputation for raw, unsentimental takes on female sexuality and ambition has not faded. Uproxx noted that the show never tried to sexualize its lead characters and instead painted the down and dirty as just that—dirty, weird, sometimes magical, other times terribly disappointing.
Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer built episodes around the unglamorous realities of unplanned pregnancy fears, disappointing hookups, and bodily mishaps that rarely appeared on screen in comedies led by women. The series treated those moments as ordinary rather than punchlines, which gave the humor a sharper, more specific texture.
Shadowhunters
The Freeform series was cancelled after Season 3. Its most lasting contribution was the range of LGBTQI representation it offered without reducing characters to single-issue storylines. Fans frequently cited the show as a safe place that helped them find the courage to come out, and the friendship between Izzy and Clary was singled out by Twitter user @spacemisha as a consistent example of women supporting one another from the start.
The series also challenged macho expectations of its male characters, allowing them space to be sensitive without framing that as weakness. That spectrum of gender expression set it apart from many other supernatural teen dramas of its era.
Jessica Jones
The Netflix series ended after three seasons. Its handling of trauma and agency placed it ahead of many later attempts to address sexual violence on screen. The Guardian highlighted the power in showing Jones’s weaknesses against Kilgrave alongside a backstory of rape and forced murder, yet still positioning her as the knight rather than the damsel in distress.
Stylist pointed out that the character rejected the traditionally sexy costume of other female superheroes, opting instead for a baggy hoody, jeans, and trainers. That choice, combined with her visible struggles with alcohol, presented strength as compatible with vulnerability and imperfection. Supporting characters like Trish Walker and Jeri Hogarth, played by Carrie-Anne Moss, added further layers to the show’s portrait of complicated women.
SMILF
The Showtime series concluded after two seasons. Creator Frankie Shaw framed the title as an ironic reclamation of a term men use to categorize women. The show followed Bridgette through the messiness of single motherhood without treating her flaws as ruinous or her sexuality as transgressive. Shaw told Interview Magazine that the character reflected real life rather than any fantasy idea of what a mom should be.
The series examined trauma without letting it become the sole defining trait of its lead. It also refused to flatten motherhood into either sainthood or cautionary tale, which kept the focus on the human contradictions at the center of the story.
Grace and Frankie
The Netflix comedy wrapped after seven seasons. Its most consistent strength was the space it gave to women in their seventies and eighties. Jane Fonda’s Grace declared on the show that she refused to be irrelevant, and the series followed through by treating desire, masturbation, and pleasure as ordinary parts of mature life.
Woman Brave noted that Grace and Frankie disrupted the way society discounts the mature experience. The show offered a cheerful fantasy of aging that still managed to land because it treated its leads as fully sexual and fully complicated rather than as background figures.
UnReal
The Lifetime series ended after four seasons. Its sharpest insight was the gap between presenting as feminist and actually behaving like one. Constance Zimmer’s Quinn and Shiri Appleby’s Rachel were both deeply flawed and morally compromised, yet their relationship was grounded in the unshakeable respect they held for each other through moments of strength and vulnerability.
The show used the behind-the-scenes world of a reality dating series to interrogate questions of race, sexuality, and class in media production. That structural approach gave the feminist arguments more weight than simple character speeches could have achieved.
GLOW
The Netflix comedy concluded after Season 3. Its willingness to retain the problematic elements of the original Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling while still critiquing them gave the series a layered quality. Vulture observed that the show routinely trafficked in racial stereotypes that engaged the audience’s nastiest assumptions, yet it also provided a stage for those same marginalized voices to be seen at all.
Season 2 addressed the exploitation of those stereotypes more directly through Tammé’s storyline. The series also used a #MeToo-adjacent plot to examine the sexualization of women in media. Its real success, however, lay in building a support system for women who had failed to find inclusion elsewhere.
Claws
The Starz dramedy finished its run after four seasons. It centered a diverse group of working-class nail technicians who turned to crime, and it developed those characters without leaning on stereotypes or using their hardships as punchlines. Carrie Preston noted to The Daily Beast that the show flipped the script on the expectation that women on television should be pillars of morality while men are allowed moral complexity.
The series tackled sexual assault and domestic abuse early in its run and balanced a feminist fantasy of taking power back with the harsh realities of daily life under the patriarchy. That combination kept the tone light without flattening the stakes.
Pose
Hacks
The Max series has been cited in 2025 roundups as one of the strongest current examples of feminist television. It centers the generational clash between a legendary stand-up comedian and her young writer, using that dynamic to examine ageism, ambition, and the specific barriers women face in comedy. The show treats mentorship as both generous and fraught, and it refuses to soften either character to make the other more palatable.
Its focus on female power in a male-dominated industry aligns with the criteria that have defined earlier entries on this list. The series makes room for both the grind of trying to succeed and the cost of maintaining that success over decades.
The Morning Show
Apple TV+’s drama has appeared in multiple 2025 feminist TV lists for its sustained look at #MeToo-era fallout inside a national news network. The series tracks power imbalances, sexual harassment, and the uneasy alliances that form between women who occupy different positions on the corporate ladder. It also addresses ageism in an industry that discards women once they reach a certain age.
By placing female solidarity alongside competition and self-interest, the show avoids treating sisterhood as automatic. The result is a portrait of workplace feminism that acknowledges both the necessity and the difficulty of collective action.
Abbott Elementary
The ABC comedy has been highlighted in 2025 best-of lists for its portrayal of Black women educators navigating systemic underfunding and bureaucratic indifference. The series uses humor to expose inequities without turning its characters into martyrs or reducing their community to a backdrop for white saviors.
Its focus on working-class feminism and the daily labor of maintaining a school in an under-resourced district gives it a grounded specificity. The show treats teaching as both a calling and a job, and it centers the women who keep the system running despite its failures.
The Testaments
The Hulu sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale premiered in 2025 and extends the original series’ focus on resistance into a new generation. Rotten Tomatoes coverage noted its continuation of fight themes while introducing fresh angles on how younger characters navigate the same oppressive structures.
By moving the story forward in time, the series tests whether the lessons of the first show have taken root or whether new forms of control require new forms of rebellion. It keeps the core feminist questions alive while shifting the perspective to characters who have grown up inside the system rather than entering it as adults.
The landscape of feminist television has shifted since the late 2010s, but the standards for what counts remain consistent: complex characters, intersectional perspectives, and a refusal to treat women as set dressing or moral decoration. The shows that meet those standards, whether concluded or still running, continue to shape how audiences expect female stories to be told.
