Female Leaders in Science Fiction
I was thinking this morning about how upset I was at the first episode of SGA season 5 with the way Woolsey chose to remove Sam Carter from her position as leader of Atlantis. And then I started thinking about how Stargate, and television in general, deals with female leaders.
Back in August I went to World*Con and the last day I attended a panel called "Inventing the Female Soldier." It covered everything from the development of women as soldiers in today's military to how science fiction treats female soldiers in the future and was a truly fantastic panel with a lots of audience participation and a huge variety of perspectives.
One of the topics that came up was writing women as leaders, either of squads or divisions or of the entire military. And that got me to actually ask a question in the panel. Because a few years ago I was a female leader in an AmeriCorps program with a military-based chain of command and one thing I noticed blatantly in the program was that the female leaders were treated differently from the male leaders, by those above as well as below us in the chain of command. And one day I was driving someone to the airport, a strong, smart, college-graduate female from one of our wilderness firefighter teams. And she started telling me how she was glad to have a male team leader because she didn't think people would follow female team leaders well, thought it was harder for them, and generally presented an attitude of not thinking women should even bother trying to be leaders, that they wouldn't be as good at it and wouldn't be respected like their male counterparts.
I was stunned.
When I asked the panel how they dealt with the challenges faced by a female leader they looked at each other and said they didn't, that they simply assumed the society had progressed to the point where gender didn't matter for a leader.
And the more I think about this, the more deeply dissatisfied I am with the answer. Because maybe in the future that will be true, but we're still watching and writing these stories through the eyes of the current day, where people honestly question if we're ready for a female US president, where it's still a big deal for a woman to be a CEO or a multi-star general or head of a university department or, heck, elected to the Senate. Because we still naturally accept men giving us orders - we respond to the height and the deeper voices with instinct over brainpower.
Back to Stargate. We watched Sam Carter grow up from a brilliant Captain with a chip on her shoulder to a strong, confident, competent soldier who'd earned the trust and respect of her teammates and superiors. I still argue that leading doesn't come naturally to her (I think it does to Jack), that she's a leader in the role-model sense of people trusting and following her but not in the active sense of wanting to be in charge of people, wanting to spend the effort needed to keep them in line, keep them alive (she learned, she can, but it's not natural to her and she doesn't enjoy it). And after seven years she finally got to be declared leader of a team. During that season we had ONE episode where we actually saw the team, with Sam in charge, go off-planet on a mission together and halfway in, Jack got called in to join them, effectively stepping in and taking command. The next season they brought in Cam Mitchell to "lead" SG-1 and though Sam was sometimes unofficially leading simply by experience, she wasn't the leader. Then she went to Atlantis, got to be in charge for a year (though we rarely saw it) and got called back to Earth and Woolsey, in the middle of the gateroom, as soon as she stepped through, told her that her skill set was no longer desired and she was removed from Atlantis. No "good job," no "thank you for your service," just a brusque brush-off of a woman who has saved this planet, sacrificed everything again and again for eleven years, and just stepped into a hard job and earned the respect of a new set of people.
Jump on over to Atlantis. We actually had Elizabeth Weir lead for three years and during the time she was constantly questioned and challenged, first by Sheppard, then by Caldwell and constantly by the IOA, and then the commander of the Apollo and even if she eventually earned the respect of those under her, she was still constantly fighting for her job. I know there are parts of fandom that don't like her, don’t think she was used well, but if you watch carefully, the way she handles different characters differently (based on what they need - Rodney needs a different touch than John), she's actually a really smart, very good, leader (if nothing else, look how she stepped into the SGC job in "Lost City" and looked at the situation and stood up to Kinsey and earned Jack's respect).
We have Teyla, a leader of her people. And she acts like a leader the first few episodes, then we watch Halling challenge her leadership, watch her people choose to leave and Teyla choose to remain behind on Atlantis and while she continues to seem to consider herself their leader, how much leading can she really be doing when she rarely sees them? How much do we see? Mostly we see her following Sheppard's orders. And later when she's pregnant and trying to rescue her people and getting leads, she has to beg for permission to follow them like she doesn't have her own agency.
Who else does Stargate give us? Every General we see is male, every commander of any ship (Prometheus, Daedalus, Odyssey, Apollo) is male, most of the societies they encounter on other planets have male leaders (at least there are exceptions here). The Goa'uld who pose long-term threats (Apophis, Sokar, Yu, Ba'al. Anubis…) and are shown leading armies and campaigns are all male. Amaunet is a big deal because she took over Sha're, Hathor, for all the harm she caused, was never portrayed as especially competent, Nirti seemed to mostly work alone and in secret and be disliked by the other System Lords. We have Adria as a big bad, but not as a competent leader, more as a petulant child with too much power. SGA gives us Wraith queens, but none of them are continuing characters. Looking at SGC, the only female team leader we ever see is Sam (and not much). The only other female team member who even rates a name is Cadman. In 14 seasons of two series, we have three female military members with names (Sam, Janet, Cadman).
And, okay, Stargate is today's military and to some extent this is representative. But still. Can you imagine Jack getting removed from command of Atlantis with the same callousness shown to Sam? Why do we see the IOA constantly questioning Sam and Elizabeth but not Landry or Jack or Hammond?
So, okay, what about other shows? We had five series of Star Trek - a show that was known for breaking barriers. Out of the five, we had one with a woman in charge (Voyager) and one with a woman not in charge but near the top of the command chain (DS9). How about Firefly? Joss Whedon is a feminist, right? Okay, Zoe is awesome, is second in command, isn't afraid to tell Mal he has a problem with his brain missing, and yet is perfectly happy following him. How about Farscape? In some ways Moya is in charge, but in many ways she's a servant. They generally don't have a leader, though eventually they choose one. D'argo. Aeryn seems to have a lot of potential, but she wasn't high up in the Peacekeeper chain of command and while she's usually doing her own thing, she doesn't try to be a leader. Battlestar Galactica? Laura Roslyn is strong and awesome and…constantly having to defend herself and fight to keep her job. The military leaders are men. Sometimes Starbuck manages to find herself CAG, and certainly people will follow her in combat, but she's too good at self-destructing once she gets any power. Earth 2 gave us Devon, so yay for female leader. Also gave us (mostly male) characters constantly questioning her fitness as leader.
So, tv writers. You're getting better at giving us awesome female characters, giving us characters with a variety of skills and temperaments and personalities. I love a lot of them. But where are the ones in charge? The ones who are in charge and aren't having to constantly fight for it, having to constantly prove they deserve their job, are capable of their job? And if you want to deal with the fact that the world isn't ready to treat female leaders the same as male leaders, if you want to show that reality, would it kill you to acknowledge it?
Back in August I went to World*Con and the last day I attended a panel called "Inventing the Female Soldier." It covered everything from the development of women as soldiers in today's military to how science fiction treats female soldiers in the future and was a truly fantastic panel with a lots of audience participation and a huge variety of perspectives.
One of the topics that came up was writing women as leaders, either of squads or divisions or of the entire military. And that got me to actually ask a question in the panel. Because a few years ago I was a female leader in an AmeriCorps program with a military-based chain of command and one thing I noticed blatantly in the program was that the female leaders were treated differently from the male leaders, by those above as well as below us in the chain of command. And one day I was driving someone to the airport, a strong, smart, college-graduate female from one of our wilderness firefighter teams. And she started telling me how she was glad to have a male team leader because she didn't think people would follow female team leaders well, thought it was harder for them, and generally presented an attitude of not thinking women should even bother trying to be leaders, that they wouldn't be as good at it and wouldn't be respected like their male counterparts.
I was stunned.
When I asked the panel how they dealt with the challenges faced by a female leader they looked at each other and said they didn't, that they simply assumed the society had progressed to the point where gender didn't matter for a leader.
And the more I think about this, the more deeply dissatisfied I am with the answer. Because maybe in the future that will be true, but we're still watching and writing these stories through the eyes of the current day, where people honestly question if we're ready for a female US president, where it's still a big deal for a woman to be a CEO or a multi-star general or head of a university department or, heck, elected to the Senate. Because we still naturally accept men giving us orders - we respond to the height and the deeper voices with instinct over brainpower.
Back to Stargate. We watched Sam Carter grow up from a brilliant Captain with a chip on her shoulder to a strong, confident, competent soldier who'd earned the trust and respect of her teammates and superiors. I still argue that leading doesn't come naturally to her (I think it does to Jack), that she's a leader in the role-model sense of people trusting and following her but not in the active sense of wanting to be in charge of people, wanting to spend the effort needed to keep them in line, keep them alive (she learned, she can, but it's not natural to her and she doesn't enjoy it). And after seven years she finally got to be declared leader of a team. During that season we had ONE episode where we actually saw the team, with Sam in charge, go off-planet on a mission together and halfway in, Jack got called in to join them, effectively stepping in and taking command. The next season they brought in Cam Mitchell to "lead" SG-1 and though Sam was sometimes unofficially leading simply by experience, she wasn't the leader. Then she went to Atlantis, got to be in charge for a year (though we rarely saw it) and got called back to Earth and Woolsey, in the middle of the gateroom, as soon as she stepped through, told her that her skill set was no longer desired and she was removed from Atlantis. No "good job," no "thank you for your service," just a brusque brush-off of a woman who has saved this planet, sacrificed everything again and again for eleven years, and just stepped into a hard job and earned the respect of a new set of people.
Jump on over to Atlantis. We actually had Elizabeth Weir lead for three years and during the time she was constantly questioned and challenged, first by Sheppard, then by Caldwell and constantly by the IOA, and then the commander of the Apollo and even if she eventually earned the respect of those under her, she was still constantly fighting for her job. I know there are parts of fandom that don't like her, don’t think she was used well, but if you watch carefully, the way she handles different characters differently (based on what they need - Rodney needs a different touch than John), she's actually a really smart, very good, leader (if nothing else, look how she stepped into the SGC job in "Lost City" and looked at the situation and stood up to Kinsey and earned Jack's respect).
We have Teyla, a leader of her people. And she acts like a leader the first few episodes, then we watch Halling challenge her leadership, watch her people choose to leave and Teyla choose to remain behind on Atlantis and while she continues to seem to consider herself their leader, how much leading can she really be doing when she rarely sees them? How much do we see? Mostly we see her following Sheppard's orders. And later when she's pregnant and trying to rescue her people and getting leads, she has to beg for permission to follow them like she doesn't have her own agency.
Who else does Stargate give us? Every General we see is male, every commander of any ship (Prometheus, Daedalus, Odyssey, Apollo) is male, most of the societies they encounter on other planets have male leaders (at least there are exceptions here). The Goa'uld who pose long-term threats (Apophis, Sokar, Yu, Ba'al. Anubis…) and are shown leading armies and campaigns are all male. Amaunet is a big deal because she took over Sha're, Hathor, for all the harm she caused, was never portrayed as especially competent, Nirti seemed to mostly work alone and in secret and be disliked by the other System Lords. We have Adria as a big bad, but not as a competent leader, more as a petulant child with too much power. SGA gives us Wraith queens, but none of them are continuing characters. Looking at SGC, the only female team leader we ever see is Sam (and not much). The only other female team member who even rates a name is Cadman. In 14 seasons of two series, we have three female military members with names (Sam, Janet, Cadman).
And, okay, Stargate is today's military and to some extent this is representative. But still. Can you imagine Jack getting removed from command of Atlantis with the same callousness shown to Sam? Why do we see the IOA constantly questioning Sam and Elizabeth but not Landry or Jack or Hammond?
So, okay, what about other shows? We had five series of Star Trek - a show that was known for breaking barriers. Out of the five, we had one with a woman in charge (Voyager) and one with a woman not in charge but near the top of the command chain (DS9). How about Firefly? Joss Whedon is a feminist, right? Okay, Zoe is awesome, is second in command, isn't afraid to tell Mal he has a problem with his brain missing, and yet is perfectly happy following him. How about Farscape? In some ways Moya is in charge, but in many ways she's a servant. They generally don't have a leader, though eventually they choose one. D'argo. Aeryn seems to have a lot of potential, but she wasn't high up in the Peacekeeper chain of command and while she's usually doing her own thing, she doesn't try to be a leader. Battlestar Galactica? Laura Roslyn is strong and awesome and…constantly having to defend herself and fight to keep her job. The military leaders are men. Sometimes Starbuck manages to find herself CAG, and certainly people will follow her in combat, but she's too good at self-destructing once she gets any power. Earth 2 gave us Devon, so yay for female leader. Also gave us (mostly male) characters constantly questioning her fitness as leader.
So, tv writers. You're getting better at giving us awesome female characters, giving us characters with a variety of skills and temperaments and personalities. I love a lot of them. But where are the ones in charge? The ones who are in charge and aren't having to constantly fight for it, having to constantly prove they deserve their job, are capable of their job? And if you want to deal with the fact that the world isn't ready to treat female leaders the same as male leaders, if you want to show that reality, would it kill you to acknowledge it?