At the start of the new drama Good Girls, we see an adorable little girl scream “we need to burn this patriarchy down!” and soon after we are introduced to three very different women, all angry at various types of injustice: a philandering husband, a very sick daughter, a sexually harassing and abusive boss. In the world of Good Girls, empowerment is not only about standing up for yourself, but also about standing with the sisterhood. In one scene, Beth (played by Christina Hendricks) gives her husband’s mistress a tongue lashing, but then also gives her money, saying: “We both deserve more than a liar in a pig suit.” In another, Beth hears the attempted rape of her sister by her corrupt former manager and comes at him with a toy gun. When he calls her bluff, she hits him on the head with a whisky bottle.

Throughout Good Girls, female rage is not just a response to personal pain, but a reaction to oppression, and a necessary catalyst for change. Today we see a number of programs explicitly inviting viewers to identify with female protagonists who have unresolved traumas, many of which come from a history of assault and abuse. This is true in comedies such as Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, where typically cheerful Kimmy is encouraged to wrestle with her angry feelings about being abducted, and dramas such as Jessica Jones, which in its second season continues to explore how Jessica’s anger shapes her healing process. Similarly, shows such as Orange is the New Black, Big Little Lies, and I Love Dick not only make complicated women into heroines, they also allow women to stand together and stand up to men who dominate, belittle and harass them.

This is a tremendous departure from a decade ago, when prestige TV dramas that focused on anger were fixated on male antiheroes. Many shows featured multifaceted female characters, but audiences often didn’t respond well to them. Throughout Breaking Bad’s run, for example, viewers rallied behind Walter White’s transformation from gentle chemistry teacher and family man to violent and abusive drug kingpin, while the character who inspired the most revulsion was his wife, Skyler, who many viewers cast as the villain, even when she was fighting to protect and defend her family just as Walt claimed to be.

Likewise, the award-winning drama Mad Men featured male characters sexually harassing, abusing and exploiting women. Yet the character who generally received the most hate in online discussions was Betty, Don’s beautiful, icy, and long-suffering wife. This is not to say that Betty’s character didn’t deserve criticism; the series often shows her to be cruel, especially to her children. But while part of the series’ pleasure was seeing characters like Peggy and Joan rise up against sexism, many viewers were also captivated by the allure of male bravado – women swooned over Don Draper’s classic brand of masculinity, even when he behaved in boorish ways.

The wives, mothers, sisters, and girlfriends we have always seen​ are finally given permission to be mad

Ten years later, audiences are being asked to identify with the Skyler Whites and Betty Drapers over their husbands. The wives, mothers, sisters and girlfriends we have always seen are finally being given the permission to be mad. In season 2 of Jessica Jones, we see Jessica (Krysten Ritter) angrily bounce a rubber ball during a mandatory anger management class as she lists the ways she has been hurt or diminished, until eventually breaking both the ball and the wall she throws it against. When Trish (Rachael Taylor) confronts the older man who abused her as a child star, her anger helps to protect her from being gaslit. When Jeri (Carrie-Anne Moss) is diagnosed with an incurable disease, she seethes rather than sobs. There is something radical about giving three very different female characters the permission to be pissed off, showing how rage can be important rather than a character flaw.

These shows illustrate the importance of female solidarity, but without romanticizing the sisterhood. In one pointed scene in Jessica Jones this season, Jeri hires three female sex workers to get high with after learning about her diagnosis. The morning after, we hear the three women talking about their lives and experiences – their kids, their friends, their romantic partners, before Jeri drops a wad of money on the table and kicks them out harshly. By including just a few moments of this type of non-sexualized conversation, the series illustrates how the show’s creator doesn’t see these women as mere objects, while still showing how Jeri views their relationship as transactional.

This season, UnReal looks at assault as a systemic problem, rather than the result of just a few bad men. In the season 3 premiere we see how the new reality TV “suitress” Serena (Caitlin FitzGerald) is pressured to drink and kiss a prospective suitor, and later see the same inebriated woman being taken from behind in her bathroom. “I never even kiss on the first date,” she says after vomiting profusely, “I don’t even use emojis!” Both Serena and Rachel (who rescues her from her “bad date”) seem to frame the sexual encounter as a mistake, even though it’s also clear that Serena was goaded into getting wasted and going much further than she wanted.

The Good Fight also plans to look at the impact of #MeToo, with forthcoming episodes focusing on a sexual harassment charge against a powerful man. In the season 2 premiere, we already see a sisterhood that is as diverse as it is tough-minded, and how very different women react to a corrupt and often confounding world, often vying for power over friendship. The sisterhood may be necessary for political change, but it can be just as cutthroat and uncaring as a male-dominated boardroom.

This angry sisterhood joins a chorus of feminist intellectual voices, who urge us to see anger as a response to injustice and argue that channeling that anger at sexism is necessary in order for women to ultimately be free. Back in 2016, before #MeToo went viral, Roxane Gay also considered the power of anger, as well as its limitations: “Anger allows us to express dissatisfaction. It allows us to say something is wrong. The challenge is knowing the difference between useful anger, the kind that can stir revolutions, and the useless kind that can tear us down.” More recently, the feminist author Mona Eltahawy asked, “What would the world look like if girls were taught they were volcanoes?”

This decade’s fascination with angry, complicated women has uprooted some of our expectations about what it means for a female character to be likable. But this recent shift from lone female antihero to the angry sisterhood offers something potentially even more subversive: a focus on female empowerment, not female suffering. Perhaps this is still too subversive a message for some: both Good Girls Revolt and I Love Dick were critically acclaimed, but weren’t renewed for second seasons. Yet the sheer number of shows this season focusing on women fighting back is encouraging. It’s a reminder that the angry women behind the scenes writing, producing and directing these shows are continuing to band together, and are nowhere near done.