On a Sunday afternoon the writing staff of hit drama “Mad Men” gathered in supervising producer Lisa Albert’s sunny dining room. Over homemade guacamole and a pitcher of mojitos, they debated whether Betty Draper, the fictional 1960s housewife of advertising executive Don Draper, should have a one-night-stand in a smoky Manhattan bar.
　　Brooks Brothers made the custom suits for these two leading characters in “Mad Men.” Suits of this period, the early ‘60s, were slim-fitting and often two-button.
　　The men were against it. Betty would never compromise her integrity like that, consulting producer André Jacquemetton recalls saying. Most of the female writers disagreed.

　　After all her husband’s infidelities, “how the hell is she going to take Don back if she doesn’t do this?” executive story editor Robin Veith argued.
　　Mr. Jacquemetton was outnumbered. From this discussion came a pivotal scene in the final episode of season two: Betty sleeps with the stranger. The writers will reveal what’s next for Betty when the show’s highly anticipated third season starts Sunday, Aug. 16 on AMC.
　　Behind the smooth-talking, chain-smoking, misogynist advertising executives on “Mad Men” is a group of women writers, a rarity in Hollywood television. Seven of the nine members of the writing team are women. Women directed five of the 13 episodes in the third season. The writers, led by the show’s creator Matthew Weiner, are drawing on their experiences and perspectives to create the show’s heady mix: a world where the men are in control and the women are more complex than they seem, or than the male characters realize.
　　In the fictional Madison Avenue advertising agency Sterling Cooper where “Mad Men” is set, male executives gulp down vodka on the rocks and ogle their neatly coiffed secretaries. Early in the series agency partner Roger Sterling tries to cheer up creative director Don Draper by assuring him that “When God closes a door, he opens a dress.” In response to a question about what women want, Roger replies “Who cares?”
　　The story centers on Don Draper and his shadowy past, but a key part of the series, the writers say, is its complicated female characters. “It’s less skewed than it appears,” says consulting producer Maria Jacquemetton, who is married to fellow writer Mr. Jacquemetton.

　　Sultry office manager Joan Holloway, played by Christina Hendricks, for example, excels at a script-reading job in the agency’s television department, but must gently step aside when a less-qualified man takes over. Peggy Olson, a secretary played by Elisabeth Moss, works her way up to copywriter and eventually lands her own office and secretary but only after she becomes pregnant and gains weight. “Part of it was her becoming a guy. She was putting on a suit of armor to protect herself sexually and because of that she could begin operating as a man,” Mr. Weiner says.
　　The writers owe much of their freedom to create an elaborate, stylized show to changes in the television industry. “Mad Men” is benefitting from new television-viewing habits: while many viewers tune in to watch original episodes, the show relies heavily on DVDs, downloads and video-on-demand services. Despite acclaim—it was the first basic-cable series to win an Emmy award for best drama and is nominated for 16 Emmys this year—it averaged just 1.5 million viewers per new episode at 10 p.m. last season. That was a 63% increase from its first season audience. More than 30 million viewers saw the show last year on downloads, video-on-demand services and all broadcasts, including repeat broadcasts the same night as original episodes, AMC says. That doesn’t include DVD sales of season two which came out last month and are expected to exceed $18 million in the first six months. It was the first original scripted drama series on basic cable channel AMC, formerly known as American Movie Classics, which had largely showed reruns of classic films.
　　Mr. Weiner says he didn’t set out to hire female writers. That said, he likes what he describes as the writers’ emotional honesty. It influences the freewheeling nature of the writers’ room, he says.
　　“A lot of people think women can only do women shows,” says Jennifer Getzinger, who started as a “Mad Men” script supervisor and is now a director.
　　According to the Directors Guild of America, the labor union that represents film and television directors, about 13% of its 8,000 directors are female. Women comprised 23% of television writers during the 2007 to 2008 prime-time season, a 12 percentage point decrease from the same period a year earlier. Nearly 80% of TV programs in the 2007 to 2008 prime-time season had no women writers, according to a study by Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.
　　Twelve weeks before production begins, the writers meet at the Los Angeles Center Studios each day. They plot out the season based on Mr. Weiner’s instructions for the narrative arc of each character. In a trick he picked up while working on HBO’s “The Sopranos,” Mr. Weiner has writers cut up an outline of an episode with scissors and tape sections to a tabletop to map out an episode. After a few days, the tabletop and dry-erase boards on the walls of the writers’ room are covered in sticky notes, index cards and slivers of the outline. A script for a one-hour episode can take as long as a month to complete and includes such details as whether Draper is sweating and instructions for extras in the background.　　
　　Writers, from left, Marti Noxon, Lisa Albert, Kater Gordon, Dahvi Waller, Robin Veith, Cathryn Humphris, Maria Jacquemetton, at Musso & Frank Grill in Hollywood.　　A large portion of the plot in season two revolved around January Jones’s Betty Draper, Draper’s collegeeducated wife who despises her husband’s infidelities and her life as a housewife but doesn’t know what else she can do. The second season ended with Betty discovering she is pregnant with a third child.
　　“Betty is in an existential hell,” says actor John Slattery who plays Roger Sterling. “How do you ever recover from that?”
　　Mr. Weiner is fanatic about keeping details about the upcoming season secret and preventing spoilers from leaking out online. Each page of any script writers take home at night has their name and contact information on it. The next morning writers must bring back their scripts and shred them right away.
　　Cast members say that in the third season the Sterling Cooper denizens confront homophobia, sexism and racism. “We’re at the point where everything starts to happen,” says lead actor Jon Hamm who plays Don Draper. “Things are evolving and changing and some characters embrace it and some fight it.”
　　Some of the writers are alumni of TV shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” or came up the ages-old Hollywood path of working as an assistant to a producer or director. Kater Gordon, 27, for example, had worked for executive producer Scott Hornbacher and was baby sitting Mr. Weiner’s four sons. After the kids went to bed, she watched Emmy screeners and impressed Mr. Weiner with her opinions. Ms. Gordon started as Mr. Weiner’s assistant on season one and was soon promoted to writer’s assistant and then to staff writer on season three.
　　To get in the “Mad Men” mood, Mr. Weiner’s office has a 1960s feel, with a vintage black leather chair paired with a mismatched emerald green vinyl footstool. He has a small bookshelf filled with research like John Cheever’s short stories among other books and a fully stocked bar with a sign: “If whisky interferes with your business, give up your business.”
　　Mr. Weiner once stopped a scene in season one and asked the props department to find smaller apples to fill a bowl because fruit was smaller in the 1960s. He asks actresses not to have toned arms or porcelain veneer teeth and directors say he requires that actors whose characters smoke (and most of them do) have also smoked in real life.
　　Mr. Weiner suggests the writers read books such as Helen Gurley Brown’s “Sex and the Single Girl,” Jack Olsen’s “The Girls in the Office,” a chronicle of single women working in a Manhattan office and watch movies like the 1960 film “The Apartment,” staring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.
　　One writer, Dahvi Waller remembered that her parents had exchanged love letters during the 1960s. “I said ‘Mom, it’s research, you have to find these letters and send them to me,’” Ms. Waller says. “I told her she could mark out anything that was too tawdry.”
　　In the premiere of season three, Salvatore Romano, played by Bryan Batt, and Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm, meet up with two flight attendants on a business trip.
　　A scene in the first season when Betty shocks the neighbors by shooting pigeons with a BB gun in the front yard comes from Ms. Veith’s memory of her own mother. “I know more about my mom than I ever have in my entire life,” she says.
　　Ms. Albert’s parents’ financial problems inspired a similar story in the second season when Pete Campbell discovers after his father’s death that he had squandered the family fortune. Ms. Jacquemetton’s struggles with infertility and adoption led to a storyline between Pete and his wife Trudy’s fertility problems.
　　Last week, at the Los Angeles Center Studios on the set of the Sterling Cooper office, co-producer Ms. Waller talked to director Mr. Hornbacher as he prepared to shoot a tense scene between Don Draper, Roger Sterling and closeted gay art director Salvatore Romano that Ms. Waller co-wrote. Actresses with up-dos and floral blouses tucked into A-line skirts held herbal cigarettes. An ashtray on the receptionist’s desk brimmed with cigarette butts stained with pink lipstick.
　　Ms. Waller says she tries to keep a 1960s mentality in her writing. Last season office manager Joan Holloway’s seemingly perfect fiancé raped her on the floor of an office at Sterling Cooper, and “I wanted her to get revenge in the third season,” Ms. Waller says. “I didn’t even propose it. There’s no way that would’ve gone over.”