Her primary responsibilities are to manage the secretarial, steno, and telephone operators pools; attend to the needs of the executives; and organize agency events.

Though skilled in her career, her ultimate goal is to find a promising and devoted man to marry, and then become the strength and motivation supporting him behind the scenes as he achieves success.

Realizing she is upset over the similarities she sees between the actress's life and her own, Roger comforts Joan by assuring her she will not end up alone and in despair like Monroe.

Joan is in a difficult place when it comes to marrying Greg, as she struggles to balance both her sassy, independent personality and the traditional vulnerability of a woman being dependent on her husband.

As the season goes on, Joan is clearly torn between wanting to be a well-off, married woman (the pinnacle of her ambition) and the fear that she will become a bored, lonely housewife.

Joan chose Greg over the stereotypical rich men she has affairs with because he is handsome and a promising young doctor just about to launch his career as a surgeon.

Her mixed feelings about her future are exacerbated when she is briefly given additional responsibilities at Sterling Cooper reading television scripts to determine ad placement, which thrills her.

However, Media Director Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) ultimately hires a young, unqualified man to take over the ad placement job, to her disappointment.

In "My Old Kentucky Home," they host a dinner party with Greg's colleagues where Joan learns that not only has he not made chief resident, but that his skill — and thus his future — as a surgeon is in question.

Not long after, accounts executive Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) runs into Joan at Bonwit Teller, where he's surprised to find her working as a shop assistant.

The two have a heated argument, ending with Joan smashing a vase over Greg's head after he says she'll never understand wanting and planning for something she always expected to get, and then realizing she'll never get it.

Greg ultimately obtains an officer's commission in the Army where he will serve as a military surgeon, and tells Joan she will no longer have to work.

She encounters sexual harassment, misogyny and sexist jokes from freelancing artist Joey Baird, who shows her little to no respect, telling others she has no talent and sleeps her way to the top.

At the end of season 4, Joan is promoted to director of agency operations, in recognition of her role in keeping SCDP afloat amid its recent financial troubles.

At the start of season 5, Joan has recently given birth to a boy named Kevin and is nearing the end of her maternity leave from SCDP.

However, at a dinner with Greg's parents, Joan learns he reenlisted voluntarily since the army makes him feel powerful and it is likely the only place where his abysmal surgical skills would be accepted.

In "The Other Woman," Joan is taken aback when Pete approaches her with a proposition to sleep with Herb Rennet (Gary Basaraba) in order to secure the Jaguar account for SCDP.

Lane, concerned that his embezzlement might be discovered if they try to pay Joan the cash, recommends privately that she demand a voting partnership and 5% of SCDP instead.

She is closest compatriots with Lane, since they frequently work together on the practical running of the business, and commiserate on keeping the flighty creatives in check and under budget.

However, Lane expresses inappropriate and unappreciated sexual interest in Joan, and she resents that he feels entitled to her in that way, while she skillfully shuts him down.

Later on, Joan easily sees the attraction between Peggy and CGC executive Ted Chaough (Kevin Rahm), but doesn't mention it to Don until they go over budget for a commercial.

Initially, she bears a clear animus towards Don for having fired Jaguar, as it cost her a substantial amount of money when the public offering fell through.

She casts a vote to fire Don for "costing me money" when he violates the terms of his return, though she later favors the sale to McCann-Erickson because it stands to provide her with more than $1 million.

During a business trip to SCDP's West Coast office, she meets Richard (Bruce Greenwood), a wealthy and very charming real estate developer whom she begins dating (though he initially expresses regret over the fact that Joan has a small child).

She takes issue with the lewd and sexist treatment that she receives from her male colleagues at the new agency and complains to Jim Hobart (H. Richard Greene), the director at McCann.

[2][3] When creating the character, Mad Men's creator Matthew Weiner tried to make her appear not as a television stereotype, but as an unpredictable and complicated woman.

[4] The Boston Globe has said that Holloway occupies "a sort of middle ground between the show's main female characters, who represent opposing paths for women of their day"; as Betty Draper (January Jones) gave up a modeling career to become a housewife and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) tries to become a copywriter in "a world where men routinely call women 'girls', and sometimes literally chase them through the office".

She hardens considerably over the series as she is repeatedly, and casually, betrayed by the various men in her personal and professional life in both small and large ways.

The stricken, optimistic dreamer is forced to be self reliant, and to expand her own power beyond her sexual influence into the realms of position and money as a result of these betrayals.

She is a green-eyed redhead, stands 5 feet 8 inches tall, and her New York State drivers license (as of Season 2) indicates she weighs 140 pounds.