Fiona Moore wrote:
Fair enough, but one also has to take into account the fact that, with a few notable exceptions (e.g. The Way Back), most of the soldiers, scientists, rebels and so forth who one sees standing around the background of Federation-run settings appear to be male.
One of the things that I find interesting, actually, is that the B7 writers obviously made an effort to include women in positions of power and in important roles, which I find very laudable. I honesty think that the idea was to present the Federation as a society of complete sexual equality. But you're quite right, of course, that the vast majority of the characters we see in the background (or even, to a somewhat lesser extent, the foreground) are male. I read about a psychological study once in which, IIRC, the researchers surveyed people after a group discussion about their perceptions of whether the group interaction was dominated by men or by women. When women did approximately half of the speaking, both men *and* woman said that women had dominated the conversation. When women made up something like 1/3 of the participation (not sure of the actual percentage, but I think it was around there somewhere), people tended to say that the interaction was equally shared. I wonder if something like that might not be at least partially what happened with B7... Make about 1/3 of the guest roles female, and it'll look equal until you actually start thinking about the numbers? And it probably just never even occured to anybody to case a woman as Generic Trooper No. 3.
(See? I can look at the show "externally." I just find it much easier with setting and background than with characters. :))