From: Betty Ragan ragan@sdc.org
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've heard this cited several times before, by several people (I think Dale Spender was one) and I can quite readily believe it. I recently catalogued all the major personalities in the 3000 year history of my fantasy rolegaming world and found myself thinking that maybe I'd put in too many women. So I did a headcount to check, and leaving aside a few dragons and demonic nobles of unknown gender, the male:female ratio came out as 60:40. Yet the women seemed to dominate the list.
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.
I've just been through the cast lists given in Attwood, doing a headcount for the whole series, omitting only a few sexless individuals (like the robot in Volcano). Plot significance of any one individual is not taken into account. It's a quick count and might not be totally accurate, but the results are clear enough:
Males: 209. Females: 60 (about 10:3 or 3.3:1)
For the first season only (all by the same writer, who despite input from Chris Boucher probably assigned the sex of most if not all guest characters), it is 51 males versus 14 females or 3.6:1. See - Nation really is a sexist pig!
Quite a few episodes featured male guests but no female ones. Prize winners here are Harvest of Kairos and Traitor, each having eight speaking male guest parts and no female ones at all.
Only two episodes seem to have no male guests - Duel, and Sarcophagus (I counted the alien as a guest character, even though she wasn't played by a guest actress).
(See? I can look at the show "externally." I just find it much easier with setting and background than with characters. :))
Rejoice, Child, for you have Seen the Light. Now go and study some woodlice.
Neil