‘how many female scientists do you know?’

‘How many female scientists doyou know?’Robert A. Jones

4 Leighton Avenue, Meols, Wirral, UK CH47 0LZ

Figure 1. Hattie Jacques playing Agatha Potter in Watch Your Stern. Alongside her

The stereotypical scientist wears a lab-coat, is often

eccentric and is usually male. Images of female scientists

in popular culture remain rare. Some of the first

portrayals of women in science occurred in a handful

of British films made during the 1950s and 1960s. These

films reflected the difficulties experienced by women in

science at the time, but they might also explain why

representations of female scientists in film continue to

downplay their role as scientists and emphasize their

identity as women.

Carry On with science

If you were looking for an image of a female scientist in aBritish film, you probably wouldn’t think of starting withthe Carry On films. But in the 1960 film Watch Your Stern,there is not one representation of a female scientist buttwo. ‘The team responsible for the clicko Carry On seriesare up to their profitable yock-raising larks’ wrote a criticin his review of the film for the entertainment magazineVariety. The plot is typically convoluted: Hattie Jacquesplays Agatha Potter, a British Admiralty scientist called into explain the failure of a new model of torpedo. However,the crew of the ship that is testing the weapon has lost thetop-secret plans of the torpedo, so they propose that anaval rating (played by Kenneth Connor) should dress upas a woman, impersonate Potter and pass off plans of theship’s air-conditioning as the torpedo schematics in orderto cover their blunder (Figure 1). The suggestion is greetedwith scorn: ‘How many female scientists do you know?’This response poses some interesting questions about thechallenges faced by female scientists and the way thegeneral public perceives them.

Several stereotypes of male scientists have beenidentified in popular culture [1,2] and they share certaincharacteristics: they are frequently outsiders, their differ-ence from ordinary people signalled by eccentricity ofappearance or behaviour, and they tend to be obsessiveabout their work, lacking a normal emotional range(Figure 2). It seems reasonable to expect a version of thisstereotype in the images of female scientists, and this doesseem to be the case in Watch Your Stern. However, thisturns out to be an exception: a careful analysis of a groupof eight British films released between 1950–1965 thathave a female scientist as a major character is revealing(Table 1).

Corresponding author: Jones, R.A. ([email protected]).

www.sciencedirect.com 0160-9327/$ - see front matter Q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Female scientists in British films

The characters of the female scientists in most of thesefilms are not simply versions of the male scientiststereotype played by the opposite sex. They are ordinaryworking women and their situations accurately reflectedthe conditions for women working in science at that time.However, this is not because the film-makers weresearching for realism, but because they were hoping tobroaden the appeal of the films by including a ‘loveinterest’. Several generalizations can be made about theway that female scientists are portrayed in these films.

Alone but ordinary

In all of these films there is only one female scientistworking as part of the research team. Even whenlaboratory assistants appear, as they do in A Jolly BadFellow, they are male. The female scientists are generally

Review Endeavour Vol.29 No.2 June 2005

is Kenneth Connor, the naval rating who tries to impersonate Potter. Image

supplied by the British Film Institute and reproduced with permission from CanalC

Image UK Ltd.

. doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2005.03.005

http://www.sciencedirect.com

Figure 2. Traditional images of male scientists. In (a) Michael Redgrave is playing

Barnes Wallace in The Dam Busters as he briefs members of the RAF who will be

flying amission that will deploy his ‘bouncing bomb’. In (b) Alec Guiness provides a

more eccentric approach to playing a scientist as Sidney Stratton in The Man in the

White Suit. Images supplied by the British Film Institute and reproduced with

permission from Canal C Image UK Ltd.

Review Endeavour Vol.29 No.2 June 2005 85

ordinary women and, with the exception of Watch YourStern, do not exhibit the eccentricities of the malestereotype. Most of the female scientists are in theirearly-twenties to mid-thirties and dress accordingly. Theywear white coats when appropriate, but more usuallytypical office attire. On social occasions they wear dresses,but there is certainly no female equivalent of the bow tie‘uniform’ that is frequently used in film to identify themale scientist in a formal setting.

Table 1. Female scientists in film from 1950–1965

Title Director Release Date

Highly Dangerous Roy Baker 1950

The Net Anthony Asquith 1953

Spaceways Terence Fisher 1953

Konga John Lemont 1960

Suspect Boulting Bros. 1960

Watch Your Stern Gerald Thomas 1960

A Jolly Bad Fellow Don Chaffey 1964

The Night Caller John Grilling 1965

www.sciencedirect.com

Qualified but subordinate

In most cases, the women are treated as valued colleagues.The most explicit example of discrimination comes fromProfessor Seaton, head of the research team in Suspect.When he is told that the scientist Lucy Byrne has a difficultprivate life, Seaton remarks that ‘all women have; they’reeither in love or not in love. Either way it interferes withtheir work.’ Nevertheless, judging by their expressions,Byrne’s other colleagues do not share this attitude.

However, the women in these films are clearly sub-ordinate to their male colleagues. In those films where thewoman is working in a group, a man is in charge. The twomost senior female scientists, Frances Grey in HighlyDangerous and Agatha Potter in Watch Your Stern seem tobe outside a research group, so their position in thehierarchy is difficult to judge. But even these two seniorscientists are referred to throughout the films as ‘Miss’instead of by an academic title they must surely haveearned, which shows the focus of the films is on theirgender rather than their scientific prowess. Furthermore,female scientists are often shown performing tasks thatwould appear to be below their skill levels, such as takingnotes or typing. In the opening scene of Suspect, LucyByrne is shown writing down results that are read out toher by her male colleague.

No family ties

Despite the relative maturity of some of the women, noneof them are married or have children (although Margaretin Konga acts as a surrogate wife to Dr Decker, whodescribes her as ‘my secretary, assistant, housekeeper,confidant andmost of all my good friend’). Some of them dotake on a nurturing role – Frances Grey is seen telling astory to her young nephew, and Caroline Cartier inThe Net tidies her boyfriend’s room while waiting forhim – but the absence of formal family ties for thesecharacters suggests that family life and a career in scienceare incompatible for a woman. Professor Seaton again hasa view on this: ‘Women are all clock-watchers’, he says.‘Only thirty years to have their babies in, and anythingwhich isn’t to do with babies is a waste of time. That’s whythey’re no good to science.’ But again, Seaton’s view doesnot seem to be shared by the rest of his group.

Romantic plots

The absence of commitment to family means that thewomen in six of these films are free to assume their majorrole – the ‘love interest’. Even in Watch Your Stern, thefake Agatha is pursued by the admiral with amorous

Scientist Actor

Frances Grey Margaret Lockwood

Caroline Cartier Muriel Pavlow

Lisa Frank Eva Bartok

Margaret Margo Johns

Lucy Byrne Virginia Maskell

Agatha Potter Hattie Jacques (Kenneth Connor)

Delia Brooks Janet Munro

Ann Barlow Patricia Haines



intent. Mostly the plots have the women involved in aproblematic romantic relationship, usually with a malescientist in their group. The resolution she desires is thatthe relationship becomes recognized and permanent. Forexample, Lisa Frank in Spaceways is in love with the chiefengineer Steve Mitchell, but he is married. When his wifedisappears, Steve is accused of murder. Lisa declares herlove for him, and tries to prove he is innocent. Finally,their relationship is able to progress when Steve’s wife isshot by the spy she has run away with.

This kind of ‘happy ending’ for the female scientist isnot always realized. Margaret in Konga and Delia Brooksin A Jolly Bad Fellow want to marry their scientist lovers,but they are both killed. At first, Delia tries to blackmailher married boss with whom she is having an affair:‘I happen to know there’s a very good research fellowshipgoing at Cambridge, which if you were to put in for me, Imight quite easily get’, she suggests. But in the end, shechanges her mind and tells him she has decided to ‘settlefor marriage’ to him.

The main reason for having these romantic entangle-ments in the plot is the film-makers desire to widen theappeal of their film to both men and women. In the wordsof one contemporary critic ‘The Net caters for themechanical interest of the men and the romantic interestof the women’ [3]. This need to reach an audiencecomprised of both sexes is clearly illustrated by HighlyDangerous. In Eric Ambler’s book The Dark Frontier, onwhich Highly Dangerous is based, the nuclear scientistturned spy is a man. In the screenplay, the scientist is awoman – Frances Grey – and the plot assumes romanticundertones that were absent from the book. Similarly, inthe novel version of Spaceways by Charles Eric Maine(adapted from the original radio play) Lisa Frank does notappear, although all the other elements of the plot – thedisappearance of the chief engineer’s wife and her lover,and the suspicion that he has killed them and launchedtheir bodies into space – are present.

Women at work in post-war Britain

DuringWorldWar II, women took overmany of the jobs thathad been performed by the men who were drafted into thearmed forces. The size of the female workforce increasedfrom 6.25 million to 7.75 million between 1939–1943 [8].However, as the war economy was dismantled, femaleemployment shrank back to 6 million by 1947 [4]. Facing alabour shortage, the government tried to encourage womento return to work and from the end of the 1940s onwardsthere was a continuous rise in female employment: by 1971,52% of women of working age were employed, representing37% of the total labour force [5].

This apparently smooth increase after 1947 was any-thing but straightforward. For example, mothers who hadbeen encouraged to go out to work during World War II bythe creation of workplace nurseries found this provisionwithdrawn after its conclusion. There was a swing back toa traditional view of a woman’s place in society. During the1950s there was increasing concern that a mother’sabsence from the home would lead to psychological andeducational problems for the children in her family. It wasargued that mothers should not work, but stay home to


look after their children [6]. Employment practicesenshrined the distinction between single working womenand married stay-at-home mothers. For example, up untilthe late 1940s, the British Civil Service forced women toresign once they married.

By contrast, leaving work on marriage or pregnancywas not mandatory in British scientific establishments.However, it does seem to have been accepted as the thingto do, as the following example of a female scientist at theCommon Cold Research Unit illustrates:

Pam Ball joined immediately upon completing hersecondary education and was given basic training inour laboratory. She then worked as a techni-cian.The object of her affections.worked here asa PhD student until he got his doctorate. He took apost at Wellcome Research and they married andraised a family nearby. (This happy ending was notuntypical, for the unit brought a number of couplestogether over the years) [7].

Similar attitudes existed at the Weapons ResearchEstablishment at Woomera in Australia, where Britishrockets were tested during the 1950s and 1960s. Thefemale ‘computers’ (data processors) were mostly youngwomen employed straight after leaving school, whousually worked there for only a few years until they gotmarried. Those few women who tried to make a careerfrom this type of work often suffered marked discrimi-nation in wages and lack of professional developmentopportunities [8].

Are the films realistic?

Feature films must be treated with caution by historians.However, it is generally recognized that they can revealattitudes prevalent at the time they were made [9]. JanetThumim has studied the way that British women arerepresented in popular films from 1945–1965 and con-cludes that there are very few representations of womenworking outside the home: ‘We might assume, from thesefilmic representations, that women rarely engage in paidemployment and that when they do it is a means to someend or other.’ What the women chiefly want is marriage:‘This is the dominant female goal – not interestingly,motherhood – but a reciprocal commitment to a particularman’, she notes [10]. The portrayal of female scientists andtheir goals in British films from the 1950s and 1960s(Figure 3) is consistent with Thumim’s assessment.

Furthermore, most female scientists would have foundthemselves the only qualified woman in a research group(Table 2). ‘Generally speaking, only a handful of womenfeature in head counts of scientific practitioners withprestigious or high-powered jobs, whereas the majority ofwomen occupy low status, unskilled or low or unpaid jobs’,notes Marina Benjamin [11]. In this respect, the Britishfilms from the 1950s and 1960s reflect reality. However,there would have been far more non-graduate staff in thelaboratories than appear in the films and many of thesewould have been women.

Nevertheless, the representation of the female scien-tists in British films from the 1950s and 1960s is probablya fair reflection of life for these women working in science


Figure 3. Two classic depictions of female scientists from films of the 1950s.

Margaret Lockwood, Frances Grey in Highly Dangerous (a), and Eva Bartok, Lisa

Frank in Spaceways (b), are both playing qualified female scientists, but the

emphasis of the film-makers is actually on their femininity. Images supplied by the

British Film Institute, (a) is reproduced with permission from ITV plc (Granada

International)/lfi and (b) is Copyright Hammer Film Productions Ltd.

Review Endeavour Vol.29 No.2 June 2005 87

in post-war Britain. However, this is more likely to be aresult of luck than judgement. It is doubtful that thescript-writers of these films would have met a malescientist, let alone a female one. The portrayal of thefemale scientists in these films was largely driven by aneed to introduce romance into their narratives. It is onlyby chance that the image this produced matched thereality for female scientists at the time.

Why does this matter?

From the 1960s onwards, more women took up careers inscience and the working life of the female scientist began

Table 2. Employment Statistics for professional and technical

workers in England and Wales in 1961. Data from [12]

Profession Number of

Women

% of profession

Chemists, physicists and

biologists

3,320 6.8

Laboratory assistants and

technicians

28,360 32.2


to change. However, the perennial need for a ‘love interest’in film means that the screen image of the female scientisthas not moved with the times.

An article in the Sunday Times in 1999 drew attentionto the fact that several recent films had involved a womanwho was a ‘world expert’ in some scientific field (the filmswere Mimic directed by Guillermo del Toro, 1997; Out-break directed by Wolfgang Petersen, 1995; Volcanodirected by Mick Jackson, 1997; Twister directed by Jande Bont, 1996 and Batman Forever directed by JoelSchumacher, 1995). The journalist, Victoria Coren, alsoincluded the James Bond film The World is Not Enough(directed by Michael Apted, 1999), which was due forrelease soon after her article was published. All the ‘worldexperts’ in these films were ‘about 25 years old, with 60-inch legs, perky breasts and blonde hair’ she wrote.

Coren had also interviewed several female scientistswho were experts in the disciplines shown in the films.They were, of course, all much older than their filmicequivalents. Although they concede that it was a stepforward to have women as scientists in major films, theyalso felt that the films trivialized the position and input ofwomen into science: ‘A 20-year-old in a film is not acredible scientist. She’s just there to add glamour’commented one of the real-life scientists that Coreninterviewed [13].

For some time there has been concern that not enoughwomen are taking up careers in science. It has beenargued that this is owing to the structures of modernscience – the lack of family-friendly employment policies,the masculine ethos of many research groups and possiblyeven the inherently masculine content of science aspractised in the west [14]. Efforts to change the cultureand content of science are slowly addressing theseproblems, but as yet have not made significant headway.However, it is also clear that what discourages schoolgirlsin particular from taking up science is the largelyunfavourable image of female scientists projected by thepopular media [15]. Current images of female scientiststend to dwell on the ‘woman’ aspect and to stress thedifficulties of bringing up a family while pursuing a careeras a scientist. The satisfactions of scientific research areoften downplayed. This tendency in popular culturederives from the attitudes that were implicit in the filmsdiscussed in this article.

References

1 Haynes, R.D. (1994) From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of theScientist in Western Literature, John Hopkins University Press,Baltimore, MD, USA

2 Jones, R.A. (2001) ‘Why can’t you scientists leave things alone?’Science questioned in British films of the post-war period (1945–1970).Public Understanding of Science 10, pp. 365–382 and referencestherein

3 Whitley, R. (1953) Daily Mirror 30 January4 Figures from Summerfield, P. (2000) ‘It did me good in lots of ways’:

British Women in the transition from war to peace. In When the Warwas Over: Women, War and Peace in Europe 1940–1956 (Duchen, C.and Bandhauer-Schoffman, I., eds), pp. 13–28, Leicester UniversityPress (London, UK)

5 Lewis, J. (1992) Women in Britain since 1945: Women, Family, Workand the State in the Post-War Years, Blackwell, Oxford, UK p. 65



6 Riley, D. (1981) ‘The Free Mothers’: pronatalism and working womenin industry at the end of the last war in Britain. History WorkshopJournal 11, 59–118

7 Tyrell, D. and Fielder, M. (2002) Cold Wars: The Fight against theCommon Cold, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK p. 10

8 Dougherty, K. (2002) Calculating Women: A brief history of theLWRE/WRE computing team. Quest 9, 31–39

9 See, for example, Murphy, R. (2000), British Cinema and the SecondWorld War, Continuum (London, UK)

10 Thumim, J. (1992) Celluloid Sisters: Women and Popular Cinema,Macmillan, London, UK

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11 Benjamin. M. (1991) Introduction. In Sense and Sensibility: Genderand Scientific Enquiry, 1780–1945 (Benjamin, M., ed.), pp. 1–20,Blackwell (Oxford, UK), (op. cit. p 3)

12 Myrdal, A. and Klein, V. (1968) Women’s Two Roles: Home and Work,2nd edn, Routledge Keegan Paul, London, UK p. 58

13 Coren, V. (1999) Sunday Times 7th January14 Schiebinger, L. (2001) Has Feminism Changed Science?, Harvard

University Press, Harvard, MA, USA15 Steinke, J. (1997) A portrait of a woman as a scientist: Breaking down

barriers created by gender-role stereotypes. Public Understanding ofScience 6, 409–428

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