WOMEN IN SCIENCE FICTION AND FEMINISM

Science fiction as a literary genre has generally been regarded as a male realm since the stories were written by men, featured male heroes and were aimed at a male readership. There was the occasional woman writer taking up the task of writing a science fiction story, but that was not often enough. It was only in the late 1960s and early 1970s that women writers began to enter the genre in earnest and women protagonists began to populate the pages of the genre. This paper provides a brief overview of the treatment of gender in science fiction. It will present some of the most important images of women that the genre has offered over the years and also discuss the impact of the second wave of feminism.