10 most feminist moments in Mad Men’s 1960s sea of misogyny

“Farewell to Mad Men” still, image via AMC

Joan puts up with an unwanted pregnancy and a promotion with no raise

Joan Holloway, a picture of beauty and strength since day one, really gets tested in season four. Her husband Greg becomes a medic for the army and is deployed to Vietnam. She tries to remain faithful to him in spite of aggressive unwanted advances from Roger Sterling. Feelings finally take over and she slips up with Roger one fateful night. Throughout this experience, she keeps trying to tell Roger that she’s not the answer to his problems, even though he insists otherwise. Of course, as her luck would have it, she becomes pregnant after their encounter.

Seeing as her husband has been gone for months, there’s no way for her to claim that the baby is that of Greg. There’s a particularly painful scene where, after discussing with Roger, Joan thinks it’s best to go to an abortion clinic. While there she witnesses a fraught exchange between a mother and a daughter, and it actually looks like Joan might change her mind about the whole thing. Either way, it’s obviously a very hard decision that Joan ultimately has to make alone.

In the midst of this, Joan is still trying to hold together the office as best she can. One of her secretaries dropped dead recently, which sort of precipitated her tryst with Roger. One day as she’s distributing mail around the office, executive Lane Pryce stops her and offers her a promotion with no pay raise. So instead of Office Manager, she becomes Director of Agency Operations, which probably meant more responsibility for the same amount of money. Joan rightfully acknowledged that the promotion was “almost an honor.” Joan, like most of the women of Mad Men, isn’t an outright feminist, but she certainly does know her worth as a worker and a human, and she knows when it’s not being matched.