 Her tendency to take some responsibility for her own plight was not countered.Her tale of being abused by men and her history of rapes were at best mentioned in passing, at worst treated disparagingly.There was a quite widely shared sense of how men and women are characterised as radically different in "EastEnders" and other soap operas..." A scene in which Kathy and her close friend Pat Evans (Pam St Clement) show their competence as electricians, a scene that allowed the characters to "re-examine past mistakes and agree that life is hell, but you've got to keep struggling, mend the electrics ('wait for a man to do a job and you'll wait forever') and have a laugh" was felt, especially in middle-class male groups, "to be a superficial kind of feminism in line with how soap operas underscore gender differences."