It comes down to the cost of the fit. Any explanation for why there are no female captain, regardless of what it is, still means there genuinely aren't any female captains, and that in itself is too high a cost for me. That's not what I want Star Trek to be. I don't feel it's in keeping with the franchise's spirit. Star Trek where female captains don't exist is inherently less appealing than a Star Trek where they do.
Why no women captains?
- Thread starter uniderth
- Start date
It comes down to the cost of the fit. Any explanation for why there are no female captain, regardless of what it is, still means there genuinely aren't any female captains, and that in itself is too high a cost for me. That's not what I want Star Trek to be. I don't feel it's in keeping with the franchise's spirit. Star Trek where female captains don't exist is inherently less appealing than a Star Trek where they do.
Getting personal now? Please cite an example of a woman in command of front line troops during the period in my post. I'll wait.
Not America, but Israel had women on the front line, decades earlier than most other civilized countries.
There's a line in the original series which stipulates that women are legally not allowed to be Star Ship Captains.
There's a line in the original series which stipulates that women are legally not allowed to be Star Ship Captains.
That's wrong.
First of all, if there were no sexual discrimination in TOS Starfleet, then the chances of us having been exposed to only male starship captains would be statistically unlikely.
The evidence presented in TOS actually supports the idea that there was sexual discrimination in Starfleet. Based on the data, the expected number of female starship captains is at most two [edit - In fact, the exact calculation shows that it is exactly one]. Detail follows.
§1. The a priori probability that a fair coin produces five heads and no tails is 1/2^5=1/32≈3%. So, it is important to note that what we observe is a priori unlikely, if there is no sexual discrimination in Starfleet.
§2. Given h=5 and t=0 (respectively 5 heads and no tails), the posterior probability density function of r (where r is the uniform probability that the hypothetical coin yields heads) conditional on the observed values of h and t is 6*r^5 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checking_whether_a_coin_is_fair]. The expected value of r is therefore E(r)=int(6*r^6,r=0..1)=6/7≈85%.
The expected number of female Constitution-class captains is therefore 12/7≈2 [edit - the value 12/7 is actually the expected number of females under the expected distribution, and it should have been designated as an approximation of the actual expected number of females; see §4 for the full calculation showing that the expected number of female starship captains is in fact exactly one]. The corresponding biased coin obeys a Bernoulli distribution [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli_distribution], under which the expected deviation from the mean of 6/7≈.85 is sqrt(6)/7≈.35. Under this expected distribution, the number of male captains would be expected to be in the range 6 to 12 around the expected value of about 10. While 6 female captains are possible under this distribution, having none at all is at least as likely.
§3. The best estimator of r is p=h/(h+t). For confidence interval Z, the error of p as the true value of r is no more than E=Z/(2*sqrt(h+t)), which is in fact a conservative bound when p is not close to .5, as is the case for us. Since h=5 and t=0, we have p=1. Therefore, 90% of the time, conservatively r>63% (with Z=1.6449). So, 90% of the time, no more than 4 female captains are expected [edit - see §4].
§2. Given h=5 and t=0 (respectively 5 heads and no tails), the posterior probability density function of r (where r is the uniform probability that the hypothetical coin yields heads) conditional on the observed values of h and t is 6*r^5 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checking_whether_a_coin_is_fair]. The expected value of r is therefore E(r)=int(6*r^6,r=0..1)=6/7≈85%.
The expected number of female Constitution-class captains is therefore 12/7≈2 [edit - the value 12/7 is actually the expected number of females under the expected distribution, and it should have been designated as an approximation of the actual expected number of females; see §4 for the full calculation showing that the expected number of female starship captains is in fact exactly one]. The corresponding biased coin obeys a Bernoulli distribution [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli_distribution], under which the expected deviation from the mean of 6/7≈.85 is sqrt(6)/7≈.35. Under this expected distribution, the number of male captains would be expected to be in the range 6 to 12 around the expected value of about 10. While 6 female captains are possible under this distribution, having none at all is at least as likely.
§3. The best estimator of r is p=h/(h+t). For confidence interval Z, the error of p as the true value of r is no more than E=Z/(2*sqrt(h+t)), which is in fact a conservative bound when p is not close to .5, as is the case for us. Since h=5 and t=0, we have p=1. Therefore, 90% of the time, conservatively r>63% (with Z=1.6449). So, 90% of the time, no more than 4 female captains are expected [edit - see §4].
In summary, there is at least as much statistical evidence supporting the total absence of female starship captains as there is supporting approximate parity between male and female starship captains [edit - in fact, there is a lot more such evidence, as demonstrated in the addendum], and there is a overwhelming evidential support for sexual discrimination in TOS Starfleet.
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Addendum:
§4. If we examine in detail the seven unseen starship captains under each biased coin, the number of females obeys a binomial distribution [the result of a sequence of Bernoulli experiments; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_distribution]. The probability of x tails is f(x,r)=binomial(7,x)*r^(7-x)*(1-r)^x. The probability of x tails over all biased coins is therefore
This table shows the values of these probabilities for each possible value of x, evaluated according to that formula.
g(x)
=int(6*r^5*f(x,r),r=0..1)
=int(6*r^5*binomial(7,x)*r^(7-x)*(1-r)^x,r=0..1)
=int(6*r^5*binomial(7,x)*r^(7-x)*(sum(binomial(x,j)*(-r)^j,j=0..x)),r=0..1)
=int(sum(6*binomial(7,x)*binomial(x,j)*(-1)^j*r^(12-x+j),j=0..x),r=0..1)
=sum(6*binomial(7,x)*binomial(x,j)*(-1)^j/(13-x+j),j=0..x)
=int(6*r^5*f(x,r),r=0..1)
=int(6*r^5*binomial(7,x)*r^(7-x)*(1-r)^x,r=0..1)
=int(6*r^5*binomial(7,x)*r^(7-x)*(sum(binomial(x,j)*(-r)^j,j=0..x)),r=0..1)
=int(sum(6*binomial(7,x)*binomial(x,j)*(-1)^j*r^(12-x+j),j=0..x),r=0..1)
=sum(6*binomial(7,x)*binomial(x,j)*(-1)^j/(13-x+j),j=0..x)
This table shows the values of these probabilities for each possible value of x, evaluated according to that formula.
Code:
g(0)=0.4615384615
g(1)=0.2692307692
g(2)=0.1468531469
g(3)=0.0734265734
g(4)=0.0326340326
g(5)=0.0122377622
g(6)=0.0034965035
g(7)=0.0005827506In summary, for almost half of the possible ways of satisfying the data, there are no females. For almost 3/4 of these cases, there is at most one female. The higher cases are progressively improbable. The expected value is in fact exactly one, which is the average of the x values, weighed by their respective probabilities. The probability that there are at most 3 females is thus seen to be exactly 0.951048951.
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The quote was "On the other hand, she's a woman. All woman. One day she'll find the right man and off she'll go, out of the service." How is "she's a woman, thus she'll find a man and go out of service" not a sexist sentiment to express?
No fault of your own, but that is an amazing typo.
Carolyn is out of service, the second a man locks her down.
Meanwhile...
She wound up with a God, not a man.
So, not "all" women.
Imagine otherwise...
Every 9 months, the Enterprise like a dump truck, pulls up on the front lawn of a Federation Orphanage and unloads all the unwanted children into a mound for redistribution, becuase every career orientated person on the Flagship is still a career orientated person.
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Keep in mind I think it's reasonable to interpret "world of starship captains" to refer to captains of Starship class vessels, like the U.S.S. Enterprise. Kirk mentions there are twelve like her, so we know there are at least 12 Starship class ships. However, we don't know if there are any more. So what I'm postulating is that there are no female captains in a really small group of 12, not that there aren't female captains in all of Starfleet.
If you're asking that, then I probably would suggest going back and reading at least the couple pages of the thread.
I can't tell if you're a really good BSer or you actually know statistics. Either way I don't think we have to attribute the lack of female captains to sexual discrimination. Just from on screen evidence we can safely say that the distribution of female to male captains is 15% female to 85% male. None of that necessitates sexual discrimination.
Lets say there are 50 officers being considered for command of the 12 Starships. without any other influences we would expect 25 males and 25 females. But, lets say there are some other elements at play. Gary Mitchell states that there are almost one hundred women on the Enterprise. So let say that "almost 100" is anywhere between 51 and 99. We don't know if this is before or after the compliment was upgraded to 430. So that gives is a range of:
203 Total crew:
25% - 48% Female crew members.
430 Total crew:
12% - 23% Female crew members.
So at the extremes we have at most 48% females and at the low end we have 12%. Averaging this out and we get about 30%. Meaning that its possible that men are more than twice as likely to join Starfleet than women.
So out of our fifty candidates now 35 are men and 15 are women. But that doesn't take into account some other things. In "Who Mourns For Adonais" McCoy expresses an expectation that women in Starfleet leave to get married. Now this certainly can't be interpreted to mean that ALL, or even MOST, women leave Starfleet. But since it's a thing enough for McCoy to mention it, we can expect greater than 50% of women leave Starfleet.
Add that to our calculation and that leaves with with 42 male candidates and 8 female candidates. None of these numbers comes from institutional sexism and instead comes from the free choices of women. Now if these numbers proportionally transferred over to the number of Starship captains, we would expect to see 10 male captains and 2 female captains.
This definitely isn't beyond the realm of the sample of captains we get in Star Trek. However, we still haven't factored in things like, the individual qualifications of the candidates, the timing of the command opportunities, physical strength qualifications, etc. It's not beyond the realm of plausibility that there are no female captains in command of Starship class vessels, and none of these factors have to do with sexism or misogyny.
203 Total crew:
25% - 48% Female crew members.
430 Total crew:
12% - 23% Female crew members.
So at the extremes we have at most 48% females and at the low end we have 12%. Averaging this out and we get about 30%. Meaning that its possible that men are more than twice as likely to join Starfleet than women.
So out of our fifty candidates now 35 are men and 15 are women. But that doesn't take into account some other things. In "Who Mourns For Adonais" McCoy expresses an expectation that women in Starfleet leave to get married. Now this certainly can't be interpreted to mean that ALL, or even MOST, women leave Starfleet. But since it's a thing enough for McCoy to mention it, we can expect greater than 50% of women leave Starfleet.
Add that to our calculation and that leaves with with 42 male candidates and 8 female candidates. None of these numbers comes from institutional sexism and instead comes from the free choices of women. Now if these numbers proportionally transferred over to the number of Starship captains, we would expect to see 10 male captains and 2 female captains.
This definitely isn't beyond the realm of the sample of captains we get in Star Trek. However, we still haven't factored in things like, the individual qualifications of the candidates, the timing of the command opportunities, physical strength qualifications, etc. It's not beyond the realm of plausibility that there are no female captains in command of Starship class vessels, and none of these factors have to do with sexism or misogyny.
It's not sexist if he's making a statement about an observed phenomenon of women's choices. If McCoy has noticed a trend of women choosing to leave Starfleet to get married, then he's simply making an assumption based on that. Maybe she had even previously expressed a desire to get married and leave Starfleet. If I lived in a town where, for some reason, most women chose to become Doctors. Then saying that a woman would choose to become a doctor would be an observation of the statistics.
I think what our dislike of this line more accurately reflects is our culture's difficulty with accepting marriage as an empowering life goal for women. The idea that a woman would choose to give up a career and become a homemaker or stay-at-home mom is balked at. If McCoy had said, "On the other hand, she's a woman. All woman. One day she'll find the right job offer as a CEO and off she'll go, out of the service." people would be praising it up and down. So, no, I don't think this line is sexist, but I think that recognizing that requires us no tot be sexist.
The only possible explanation would be if Starfleet was an incredibly misogynistic organization that had rejected the idea that men and women are equal.
That would probably be an accurate description of Starfleet as depicted in TOS; misogyny permeates TOS throughout. But later series have thankfully retconned this, and we should ignore or creatively reinterpret anything from TOS that advocates cisheteropatriarchy.
Not getting personal at all. But you presented TOS’s women as “nurses and yeoman” standard as a sign of Gene’s experience and of the times. There were no women in combat roles on the US side of things, but there were plenty of women pilots in the Air Force ferrying planes and pilots from one point to another as well as teaching in flight schools. Gene would have flown in a plane piloted by a woman plenty of times. His attitudes were not a sign of anything but his own unfounded prejudices.
For people? You might have a point if there was some sort of counterbalance that showed men also had other priorities than running around banging as many women as possible, but we simply don't. TOS, my favorite TV show ever, laid the misogyny on thick.
The United States was far behind, and continues to be, the times where women in the military and combat were concerned. So was Star Trek.
https://www.history.com/news/meet-t...aring-female-pilots-who-bombed-nazis-by-night
https://mashable.com/2016/07/30/soviet-women-snipers/
https://www.history.com/news/meet-t...aring-female-pilots-who-bombed-nazis-by-night
https://mashable.com/2016/07/30/soviet-women-snipers/
Why would a woman leave a job to get married? Who does that? This was stated as fact by McCoy and Kirk doesn’t disagree. Kirk is one of the people who promotes his underlings. Is he going to promote someone he doesn’t think is going to stay on the job? That’s an argument for the modern glass ceiling. You don’t invest in someone or hire them at all if you think their profession is just a stop gap to a man.
So as I stated, no front line combat or command roles. Just support. Thanks.
I have no idea.
Many women in the mind 23rd century apparently.
Perhaps in the 23rd century promotions are based on objective criteria rather than an assessment of the individual's projected career length.
No, you stated, and I'll quote it a second time, that Gene's experience only allowed for "nurses and yeomans". That's what I'm taking issue with.
Men's opinions on women wants, desires, and actions have never had any basis in reality.
Well, that's helpful.
Women's roles in the US Navy were quote restrictive when Star Trek was on NBC and moreso when Roddenberry was in the service one score earlier. During most of his lifetime there weren't women in command of US Navy ships. In fact, Navy regulations prohibiting women from serving aboard ships were in force until Owens v. Brown in 1978 struck that down as unconstitutional, and then Congress approved a change to Title 10 USC Section 6015 permitting women to fill sea duty billets on support and noncombatant ships. The first woman to command a US Navy warship wasn't until the end of 1990, not long before Roddenberry died.
Roddenberry put a woman as XO is his first pilot, on the bridge in the pilots and series, and as specialists (Masters, Mulhall, etc.). Yeomans largely vanish after the first season, and likely because most of the ones we see were not-Rand fill ins. Were women written terribly in many cases? Sure. Where they only nurses and yeomans? No.
So I don't know what the argument is here.
Roddenberry put a woman as XO is his first pilot, on the bridge in the pilots and series, and as specialists (Masters, Mulhall, etc.). Yeomans largely vanish after the first season, and likely because most of the ones we see were not-Rand fill ins. Were women written terribly in many cases? Sure. Where they only nurses and yeomans? No.
So I don't know what the argument is here.
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Take it all you want.............don't care. Still true.
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