... I gain more and more sympathy with a certain modern day movement, which I won't name so as not to atract skimming trolls. As I was growing up during the period in which this show was produced, I can personally attest that what it depicted was not overboard - it was perhaps even worse, in fact.
A boss is having his female subordinate screen candidates for a job which could only be filled by a young woman, because no real Man would take such a job, and a male applicant would immediately encounter gay panic!
Said boss rejects an apparently qualified (female) applicant because her "caboose" wasn't adequate. And Mary Richards, the pioneering single female career woman, shrugs it off and introduces a wildly incompetent candidate, who at least appears adequate in the "caboose" department, at which her boss lears, "Back her in here."
The more episodes I rewatch, the more I question, was this show really so groundbreaking, or was it just a beating-down of women starting to protest against what was such a prevalent attitude, even in the 1970s...
If anyone thinks I'm exaggerating, watch a season or two of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show; a constant joke of the series was about how Gracie was the real moneymaker of the couple, and yet, how many episodes revolved around the purportedly ditzy Gracie coming up with elaborate schemes to bilk George out of a smidgen of the couple's money, the source of which she was acknowledged to be. Because, of course, he was the husband, and thus the lord and master of all earnings.
Granted, Burns and Allen were a decade prior to the MTM Show, but it's hard not to see how ingrained such attitudes were on all sides. In Moore's earlier series, The Dick Van Dyke Show, how many episodes revolved around Rob feeling emasculated and declaring that he was the husband and he was putting his foot down!
Anyone who tries to deny long-standing sexism, as well as other prejudices, is either being disingenuous or obtuse.
It pains me now to see that what I found funny as a teen was so blatantly awful.