On Broadway: back in Broadway's golden age, working women showed their clout.

For the most part, Broadway, musicals don't address gender issues directly. But in their sly, underhanded way, they have often managed to comment on them. For example, every lead character Gwen Verdon ever played, from Can Can to Damn Yankees to Chicago, held down a job. They may not have good jobs, but they all make their own way in the world. And Broadway musicals overflow with such women.

Look at the other greats: Ethel Merman, an ambassador in Call Me Madam and a professional sharpshooter in Annie Get Your Gun; Mary Martin, a nurse in South Pacific and a governess in The Sound of Music; Barbara Cook, a librarian in The Music Man and a sales clerk in She Loves Me. Even as far back as the '20s, Marilyn Miller, who played her share of dewy ingenues, worked as a dishwasher in Sally and a bareback rider in Sunny.

And consider the roles: Laurey in Oklahoma! runs a ranch; My Fair Lady's Eliza sells flowers in the street; Dolly supports herself as a matchmaker in Hello, Dolly; Rose in Gypsy is an entire entertainment conglomerate. Somehow, a form that grew out of operetta, with its blushing maidens and merry, widows, and the music hall, with its showgirls deployed mainly as decorative objects, evolved into an arena for strong, capable women.

I don't want to overstate the case. A census would almost certainly reveal that most of the careers depicted in Broadway musicals are related to show business, from the singers and dancers of Show Boat to the gypsies of Chorus Line and 42nd Street. Barbra Streisand may have started out as a secretary (in I Can Get It for You Wholesale), but she ended up a vaudeville star (in Funny Girl). Miss Adelaide, Sally Bowles, Evita, and Roxie Hart could all be members of AGVA.

And the second most popular career in musicals would have to be working in the sex industry. Singing and dancing members of the oldest profession work in ancient Rome in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum; in turn-of-the-century New York in Tenderloin and New Girl in Town; and in the Caribbean in House of Flowers; they're in '70s platforms in The Life. The kind of jobs that women in a Broadway audience might actually have is not nearly as prevalent. What's more, the happy endings for the working women in these shows often involve chucking the career.

All that said, there's a remarkable string of musicals--especially from the 1940s onward--that feature independent, self-supporting women. Such women had become familiar in the movies of the '30s and '40s, but they were, by the 1950s, nearly invisible in the popular culture. For every gold-digging, eyelash-flapping Lorelei Lee, Broadway musicals proposed a serious, hardworking young heroine of Irene. While television fed us Lucy Ricardo--whose aspirations to a career were mercilessly mocked in episode after episode of "I Love Lucy"--Broadway gave us Babe Williams, a union leader in The Pajama Game, and Lola and Eliza and the rest.

A good reason for the existence of these women can probably be summed up in two words: Betty Comden. One of a handful of female librettists working on Broadway, she set a high standard for female characterization. In two seminal shows, she contrasted old-fashioned man-traps with brainy mavericks. She paired the beauty queen of On the Town with a worldly and wise-cracking female taxi driver. She matched the irresistible ingenue of Wonderful Town with a wise and clever older sister who just happens to be a writer. Later, she made the heroine of Bells Are Ringing an entrepreneur who runs an answering service from her New York apartment. Betty Comden's women weren't all smart, tough, witty. In other words, they weren't all Betty Comden. But those who were, were widely imitated in other shows.

Sadly, the Betty Comden woman is pretty much missing from today's musicals. The closest thing on Broadway right now is, ironically enough, Edna Turnblad in Hairspray. Courden might wonder what a frumpy, overweight housewife played by a man has in common with her sexy, savvy career girls. First, she's in business, too--her laundry service is different only in its details from the answering service in Bells Are Ringing. More important, she's got a sharp tongue. And most important, she's a living, breathing reminder on the stage that women cannot be measured against familiar stereotypes. And that message--or at least its general drift--has been delivered in musicals for a good long time.

Sylviane Gold has written about theater for Newsday and The New York Tilnes.