Of Sci-Fi and Women

As you may have noticed in most TV shows and movies, there seems to be a dearth of female characters when compared to the number of male characters, and even fewer developed female characters. Mainstream media tends to prefer the stories and experiences of men; we can apply a simple test to see if a plot remotely cares about women's lives. It's called the Bechdel Test, named for its creator, Alison Bechdel. If you haven't already heard, it goes like this: 1) are there at least 2 women with names? 2) do they talk to each other? 3) about something other than men? It's surprising how many popular media fail this test. Passing the Bechdel Test doesn't mean a work is feminist, but rather that it acknowledges that women actually exist in meaningful ways: It's a little sad when that alone is a step in the right direction.

Science fiction tends to pass the Bechdel Test, and the female characters tend to be more fleshed out than a simple token girl or love interest. Unfortunately this doesn't mean that women have an equal part in science fiction plots. Why is it that in almost every single future fantasy world, there are more men doing more things in more places of power than women? You'd think that far into the future gender equality would have been possible. And almost every single new culture they meet is also run by mostly men? It's as if science fiction writers themselves can't even fathom equality. So there's one Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) episode where they run into a matriarchy that oppresses men: Thanks for the thinly veiled allegory. And no, TNG you don't really have the best record of representing women's experiences and stories.

TNG only has 2 female characters that appear on a regular basis: Deanna Troy, and Beverly Crusher. They almost never talk to each other, and when they do it's almost always about men (although they are quite useful on the ship). Gainan and Deanna's mother are two other female characters that rarely appear. Also Tasha Yar who died: was 3 main-character women on the ship too much at a time for the series? All of these female characters were somewhat stereotypical, mainly playing the role of healer, therapist, and love interest (Tasha was an unsuccessful try at a "strong female character" who ended up just being one-dimensional and annoying).This is compared to the large cast of male characters: Picard, Riker, Geordi, Data, and Worf, sometimes Wesley Crusher, Miles O'Brien and rarely Q. The male characters are the main focus of most of the shows and are a good deal more developed.

Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (DS9) isn't much better for the low female:male ratio. There's female Dax and Kira who are probably the most developed and interesting female characters yet on Star Trek (and sometimes Leeta, Kai Winn, Keiko, and rarely Quark's mother), but on the male side is Sisko, Jake, Julian, Worf, Quark, Rom, Nog, Odo, Garek, and sometimes Dukat, Weyoun, Jem'Hadar, Morn, The Grand Nagus, Bareil, Vic Fontain...The list just goes on and on. At least Dax and Kira contribute to most episodes, as they were actual leaders of the crew: chief science officer and military leader respectively. They often talked to each other, and it was only sometimes about men.

Star Trek: Voyager (STV) actually has a female Captain Janeway, Chief Engineer B'lanna, and medical assistant/telepath Kes. A new female character, Super efficient/cyborg hot chick, Seven of Nine showed up, but guess what?? Kes left the show in the same episode: I guess 3 main female characters is the absolute limit for Star Trek series. There are 6 main male characters: Chakotay, Tuvok, Tom, Harry, The Doctor, Neelix.

Why in most genres is it necessary to outnumber female characters at least 2:1 with male ones? Especially in fantasy scenarios where you could have an equal amount of women and it would be believable? In Star Trek, its society believes that men and women are capable of the same things, so why don't its creators reflect this? Whether or not a character is a female or male does not greatly impact their personality or story arc, so why should so few of the characters be women?

It Seems like "man" is still the default in our society, and women is "other". That's why boys generally won't read books with female protagonists (they think they won't relate, as girls are much different than boys), but girls will read books with male protagonists (male experiences are universal and can be related to by everyone). Very few stories have more females than males (or even equal numbers of females and males), and when they do it's often tripe written "for girls": stereotypical stories about liking boys, hating yourself, and back-stabbing your friends. This is not at all representative of female interests or the female experience! When will authors learn that women have life experiences outside romance, just like men do, that are worth telling about? Men's experiences are not the only ones humans can enjoy and relate to. Don't women deserve to have equal roles in our literature and media? What does it say about a society that largely excludes the stories of women?

In closing, I'd like to refer you to my favourite charity, The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, that is attempting to make strides, especially in children's media, for females to be more equally represented. Media are a reflection of our society: obviously women's experiences are still less important than men's. But media can also be used as a tool for change: if we can change the media, it can change our social conditioning about the comparative value of each gender further towards equality.