Much of our storytelling practice is implicated in Catalyst’s ‘Double Bind’ Effect. Arguably, it’s perpetuating this dilemma for women. The Double-bind articulates the role of stereotyping in holding women back from leadership roles: ‘when women take charge, they are viewed as competent leaders – but disliked; when women take care they are liked – but viewed as less competent leaders’ (Catalyst). This is the ‘Women take Care’ role-trap. Ubiquitous in our storytelling, from casting decisions to acting choices, our creativity is being stifled by this pernicious stereotype.
When Salt was re-cast with Angelina Jolie, the role was re-conceived. Where the Tom Cruise incarnation was on a mission to protect his wife and children, the creative team felt motherhood would soften Jolie’s character too much, so “made her a childless vigilante”. ‘Women take care’ and this weakens us. Worse, this baseless stereotype is being used uncritically to determine the quality of our representation. Performance choices can be used to undermine this automatic association, however.
The role of wildling leader Karsi in Game of Thrones was originally a father. He must send his children away to safety moments before facing a savage death. When confronted by child wights, Karsi sees them as children, freezes and is quickly killed by them. The director of this episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones, Miguel Sapochnik, re-imagined Karsi as a mother to make the scene more affecting (according to Robinson and Minton). ‘Women take Care’ at our peril. Karsi, played by Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, uses predominantly masculine nonverbal behaviours (competitive, and goal-oriented), but is still ultimately overcome by her ‘caring’ response to the child-wights, which her casting positions as ‘particularly a female problem’. Therefore although her nonverbal behaviour goes some way to mitigating the ‘Women take Care’ role-trap, her casting ultimately undoes this when it interacts with the narrative. Had Conscious Creativity been employed in this casting process, when a possible gender-swapped casting was floated for the character of Karsi by the director, this tool would quickly have revealed the operation of bias influencing the re-gendering.
Although Karsi has masculine personality traits, thus appearing to be an excellent candidate for gender-swapped casting – the death scene is pivotal to our understanding of this character. It reveals that caring for children in particular is an essential aspect of Karsi’s character. Similarly, the director’s focus on this scene would have driven the casting profile into a feminine personality. Having then identified Karsi this way, Conscious Creativity would automatically flag the conflation of gender personality (caring) with gender identity (female) as a pitfall to be avoided. Instead, we may then have seen a strongly masculine Viking-type character who is brought down by his care of, and love for, children. This would have undermined a stereotype rather than falling into reinforcing one. That said, the gender representation in the Game of Thrones cast was abysmal, and Sørensen’s Karsi was one of a pitifully small selection of female characters not actively objectified by the ‘male gaze’ of the direction, which makes criticising it unsettling to me. This illustrates the urgent need to improve female leadership representation in the entertainment industry.
(Above: Call the Midwife promotional photograph, source: BBC iPlayer.)
Call the Midwife unavoidably embodies the ‘Women take Care’ stereotype, but the ensemble nature of the cast allows them to dismantle it, as well. This BBC series has been running since 2012 and follows the daily dramas of a group of midwives, some of them nuns, in the post-war East End of London. The ensemble nature of the cast allows the writers to explore the very different styles of midwifery (and care-taking) these women utilise. Sister Evangelina, played by the incomparable Pam Ferris, does a particularly wonderful job of undermining the ‘motherly’ association we have with midwifery. Her Sister Evangelina is single-minded, blunt, and does not suffer fools gladly. Ferris plays with very direct, often competitive, usually uncompromising, tactics. Her Sister is tough and ‘softens’ only rarely. Nonetheless, we see her actively taking care of her community, supporting the new staff and her patients. Ferris’ performance captures Sister Evangelina’s warmth but plays against the role-trap of the ‘maternal care-giver’ by borrowing from ‘masculine’ tactics at least as often as from ‘feminine’ ones. The show also has a strong record of exploring gender-related issues (such as abortion or domestic violence) as well as race and ability, with a series regular played by an actor with Down’s syndrome. The performance choices of the Call the Midwife cast would benefit from the Acting prompts to support them in creating a wider diversity of leadership representations, however.
Even when Pam Ferris’ Sister Evangelina was part of the cast, hers was the only strong exception to the interpersonal leadership style of the other characters. Although we saw flashes of this with Nurse Phyllis Crane (played by Linda Bassett) too, with both of these characters their more direct and task-oriented approach is positioned as ‘wrong’ or ‘inappropriate’ through narrative action and performance choices of the other cast members. This ‘masculine’ style of leadership would contravene the gender prescriptions of the nurse, midwife, and nun role traps, as well as the prescriptions of the actors’ gender itself. This makes it especially vital that we see this leadership style, alongside feminine and gender-multiple styles, being modelled by this cast of female leaders. Had they followed the acting prompts, this webtool would have supported them in exploring different tactic and persuasion styles, which would have allowed for a more diverse representation of leadership from the characters.
Call the Midwife is at least strong on demonstrating the violence of childbirth as well as the courage and strength of women, although this doesn’t always sit well with reviewers. Sean O’Grady in The Independent questioned the need for placenta to be shown (“albeit glimpsed only momentarily”) during a childbirth scene, saying “surely there are limits to just how much obstetric splashback we have to endure for the sake of authenticity”. Sorry, Sean, you'll need to toughen up if you want to watch 'women's work', because when 'women take care' they're competently 'taking charge' of some of the toughest work there is.
Some popular television does attempt to break with the Double Bind, or at least confront it. Christina Yang, played by Sandra Oh in ABC's long running medical drama Grey's Anatomy, is a rare example of an ambitious woman. Yang is highly rational, competent, and unemotional. She so completely rejects interpersonal leadership that she labels her interns as numbers rather than learning their names. In addition to being ambitious, she is explicit about not wanting children - even to the point of having an abortion. A radical decision on popular television. Despite these 'unlikable' qualities that exemplify powerful gender role transgressions - Christina Yang remained a popular character. However, she is presented as 'unlikable' and 'prickly' within the narrative and does conform to certain ethnic stereotypes. Nonetheless, through Yang we are able to confront 'the ambitious woman' and the 'high functioning Asian-American' tropes, and critique the Double Bind itself, because her character is built with contradictions, depth and nuance.
To fully subvert the Double Bind, we need storytelling that models competent female leadership that is ambitious, logical, and crucially - likable.
It is time to stop punishing women who transgress, and start celebrating them instead!