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Women have always been represented among science fiction writers and fans. Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley has been called the first science fiction novel,[1] although women wrote utopian novels even before that, with Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, publishing the first, The Blazing World, in the 17th century.[2] In fantasy, the rich heritage of myth, religion and folktales emerged from oral cultures transmitted by both men and women. Early published fantasy was written by and for both genders – for example gothic romances, ghost stories, and similar stories. Other examples of speculative fiction include utopias and surreal fiction, both of which, again, were written and enjoyed by women as well as men. However, genre science fiction in particular has traditionally been viewed as a genre orientated toward a male readership.[3]
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There have been women writers, such as Clare Winger Harris and Gertrude Barrows Bennett, from the beginning as creators and consumers of science fiction. Despite this the genre had a reputation as being by men for men, or sometimes for boys.[4] A support for this hypothesis is that women did not win SF awards for fiction, like the Hugos, until the late 1960s. Further the 1966 "Astounding/Analog All-Time Poll" did not list any novels by women[5] and the 1973 "Locus All-Time Favorite Authors Poll" was over 90% male.[6] Of the two women in Locus's poll one, Andre Norton, had been "gender ambiguous" for many of her readers. This use of ambiguous, or male, names extended to other major female writers of the era like C. L. Moore and Leigh Brackett. Women who wrote under their own names, like Zenna Henderson, initially tended to write more "domestic" material concerning teachers and mothers. A partial exception to this is Katherine MacLean who wrote sociology and psychology oriented fiction while only rarely using a male name, while Margaret St. Clair used both a male name and her own with neither by-line necessarily meaning a "domestic" tone.[7]
Eric Leif Davin argues in Partners in Wonder that the reputation is unjustified; that compared to other careers, science fiction was a "safe haven" and unusually accepting of outsiders, including women.[8] Davin reports that only L. Taylor Hansen concealed her sex in the early years, pointing out that C. L. Moore was hoping to avoid being detected by her job as being a science fiction writer, not trying to conceal her sex. Nevertheless, women writers were in a small minority; during this period almost 1,000 stories published in science fiction magazines by over 200 female-identified authors between 1926 and 1960 were documented, making women writers 10-15% of contributors. His is a minority view, "at odds with the common perception of science fiction".[8]
Unquestionably, however, the advent of second wave feminism in the 1960s, combined with the growing view of science fiction as the literature of ideas, led to an influx of female science fiction writers, and some saw this influx as the first appearance of women into the genre.
In the 1960s and 1970s, authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin (who debuted in 1963) and Joanna Russ (who debuted in the 1950s) began to consciously explore feminist themes in works such as The Left Hand of Darkness and The Female Man, creating a self-consciously feminist science fiction.
Three women have been named Grand Master of science fiction by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America:[9]
Females have been active in science fiction fandom for some time, and the Oxford dictionary of science fiction dates the coinage "femfan" (sometimes: "femme fan") to as early as 1944.[10] Leigh Brackett says of the history of women in SF "There always were a certain number of women fans and women readers."[11] Labalestier quotes the editor of Startling Stories, writing in 1953, as saying "Ten years ago [i.e., 1943] stf fans were practically all male, today with or without benefit of fan activities, a lot of girls and housewives and other members of the sex are quietly reading science fiction and beginning to add their voices to the bable... We honestly never expected such a surge of female women into science fiction,"[12] and Silverberg puts "probably the first appearance of the 'Women in Science Fiction' panel soon to become a fixture of these conventions" as occurring at the 10th World Science Fiction Convention in 1953;[13] which was also the first World Science Fiction Convention chaired by a woman, author Julian May.
While science fiction fandom has been an organized phenomenon for decades—presaging the organized fandoms of other genres and media—the study of science fiction fandom within cultural studies and science fiction studies is relatively new. Consequently, assertions about the prevalence of women in fandom are largely anecdotal and personal, and sometimes contradictory. Most prominent among these assertions is the claim that it was the advent of the original Star Trek television series which brought large quantities of women into fandom. This claim is critically analyzed by Davin, who finds it poorly founded, and cites a long history of female involvement in fandom decades prior to Star Trek;[14] Larbalestier also cites women active science fiction fandom before the late 1960s and early 1970s.[12]
However, females became more visibly present in fandom, and more organized, in the 1970s. The slash movement among fans began, as far as anyone can tell, with Diane Marchant's publication of the first known Star Trek "Kirk/Spock" story in Grup #3 in 1974. 1974 also saw the creation of The Witch and the Chameleon, the first explicitly feminist fanzine.[15] The fanzine Khatru published a "Women in Science Fiction" symposium in 1975 (one of the "males" who participated was James Tiptree, Jr.). In 1976, Susan Wood set up a panel on "women and science fiction" at MidAmericon, the 1976 Worldcon; this ultimately led to the founding of A Women's APA, the first women's amateur press association. Also in 1976, WisCon, the world's leading—and for many years, only—feminist science fiction convention and conference was founded: an annual conference in Madison, Wisconsin. In turn, as a result of discussions at WisCon, institutions such as the Tiptree Awards and Broad Universe arose to address questions of gender in speculative fiction and issues peculiar to women writers of speculative fiction.[16] Some of the same people involved in creating WisCon also founded the feminist fanzine Janus, which was thrice nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine (1978–1980).[17]
However, the perception of speculative fiction as mainly a men's genre continues to be widespread. As the inclusion of women within science fiction and fantasy more broadly has become obvious, the specificity of the perception has evolved. For instance, the still widely held view that "science fiction and fantasy are men's genres" has been refined by some to distinguish between science fiction as a genre mainly appealing to men, and fantasy, which is generally seen as being more accommodating to women[18] (some subgenres, particularly urban fantasy, with female protagonists, and paranormal romance are seen as being more popular with women than with men[19]). Little formal study has supported any of these distinctions, whether based on readers, writers, or characters.
The portrayal of women, or more broadly, the portrayal of gender in science fiction, has varied widely throughout the genre's history. Some writers and artists have challenged their society's gender norms in producing their work; others have not. Among those who have challenged conventional understandings and portrayals of women, men, and sexuality, there have been of course significant variations.
The study of women within science fiction in the last decades of the 20th century has been driven in part by the feminist and gay liberation movements, and has included strands of the various related and spin-off movements, such as gender studies and queer theory.
In the 1970s, a number of events began to focus on women in fandom, professional science fiction, and as characters. In 1974, Pamela Sargent published an influential anthology, Women of Wonder: Science Fiction Stories by Women, About Women -- the first of many anthologies to come that focused on women or gender rules. Additionally, movement among writers concerned with feminism and gender roles sprang up, leading to a genre of "feminist science fiction including Joanna Russ' 1975 The Female Man, Samuel R. Delany's 1976 Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia, and Marge Piercy's 1976 Woman on the Edge of Time.
The 1970s also saw a vibrant gay liberation movement, which made its presence known in science fiction,[21] with gay/lesbian and gay/lesbian-friendly panels at conventions and articles in fanzines; gay/lesbian content increasingly present in the fiction itself; the gay/lesbian bookstore "A Different Light", which took its name from Elizabeth A. Lynn's novel of the same name;[22][23] and a focus on GLBT issues in the pages of feminist publications.
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