Especially in the wake of Meghan Markle’s engagement to Prince Harry, young girls still dream of being princesses-but now their dreams are wider. Yet modern Hollywood’s willingness to feature women in powerful leadership and warfighting roles has opened a world of possibilities.

The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media has also pointed out this gap more generally-that, even with leading women in successful big-budget action franchises and films like Star Wars, The Hunger Games, and Wonder Woman, these movies still routinely feature male characters on screen three times as much as females. And The Force Awakens increased female speaking time from 6 to 28 percent.Ī major gain, this comes with some salt: the film’s female lead, Rey, had fewer lines than her male supporting character (Finn). 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens featured a wholesale shift change from men to women: Princess Leia became General Leia the Empire’s Grand Moff Tarkin gave way to the First Order’s Captain Phasma wise Master Yoda and Jedi Luke Skywalker became sage advisor Maz and budding Jedi Rey. Leia has become a decorated combat veteran, strategist, mother, and respected military leader. Those women who endured hazing until graduation in 1980 would be met that year with jokey stereotypes about military women in the movie Private Benjamin.įast forward to 2017. In 1977, female Army recruits received letters describing their weapons training, telling them the “intent of the training is not to make a combat soldier out of you (women may not be assigned to combat or direct combat support operations) but to give you confidence.” Women Marines and sailors were similarly limited to non-combat roles, and female cadets had just entered the nation’s service academies in 1976. In this blockbuster and beyond, it seemed like Princess Leia was the lone heroine that exposed global audiences to a female character who fights, shoots, kills, and looks good doing it.Īround the same time, women had just begun making strides for full inclusion in the ranks. Moreover, in the original trilogy’s total runtime of nearly 400 minutes, female characters other than Leia only spoke about one minute.

Female characters were virtually nonexistent, with only 6 percent of that script’s lines.

At the time, only five of the original ninety-three action figures represented a woman (all were Princess Leia). In 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope, Leia slipped on-screen as the feisty damsel in distress. It wasn’t easy, but both found their swords. Over the forty years of the Star Wars franchise, Leia went from princess to general at the same time American military women were looking to wield their own weapons. “She wasn’t looking for a knight, she was looking for a sword,” wrote the poet Atticus, who might have been thinking of Star Wars’ Leia Organa.

Evolution of combat jedi academy