Representing Women in STEM Science-Based in Film and Television

Chambers, Amy ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3801-3582 (2022) Representing Women in STEM Science-Based in Film and Television. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Science since 1660. Palgrave. ISBN 9783030789725 (print); 9783030789732 (online)

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Abstract

Whether as biographical or fictional figures, women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) have been offered limited representation in mainstream Anglo-American film and television. Recent examples such as Hidden Figures (2016), Black Panther (2018), and Annihilation (2018) have begun to address the imbalance by incorporating them as protagonists within a community of professional, capable women showing that women scientists and women-led science-based stories do not constitute a barrier to critical and financial success. This chapter focuses on the representation of women scientists in contemporary film and television and considers the different ways in which we might approach the framing and proliferation of women’s representation as scientists. This chapter argues that with a more intersectional approach to the representation of the sciences on screen it may be possible to begin shifting the expectations of what science is, and who scientists are and what they look like.