Women in Science on "The Big Bang Theory"

I was eating dinner tonight when a rerun of The Big Bang Theory came on television. I have always been vaguely bothered by the way this show treats women solely as the objects of male desire. The female characters tend to be overly sexualized and not taken seriously by the men. There isn't much character development for the women of the show and after six seasons the primary female character still doesn't have a last name. The Big Bang Theory honestly kind of sucks at portraying female characters.

In general, the show doesn’t handle female characters well, but today I noticed a particular problem that sticks out and that is how the show treats the careers of women in science. The two main female scientists on the show are Bernadette Rostenkowski, a microbiologist, and Amy Farrah-Fowler, a neurobiologist. From early on, it’s established that the main character, Sheldon Cooper, views science as an intellectual hierarchy with theoretical physics at the top and the life sciences at the bottom, if they even qualify as "science" in the first place. Now, this character's attitude is a problem in general for scientists but, it also speaks to the attitudes of the writers about the female scientists that they are both biologists as opposed to the men who are all somehow involved in physics and engineering. The distinction is alarming.

Furthermore, the women’s scientific achievements tend to be trivialized and are often used as plot devices to build compelling character arcs for the male characters. For example, when Bernadette receives her PhD and a job offer the story becomes a story about her boyfriend, Howard, trying to cope with making less money than his female partner. This takes what should be a celebration of Bernadette’s accomplishments and instead demonizes her achievements while also failing to make the story about her in the first place. Likewise, when Amy is published in a neurology journal the story focuses on Sheldon’s lack of congratulations and pride for her, once again making the story about a man’s character development instead of about a woman’s achievements.

In addition, so many jokes are thrown around about the research the women do and many of those jokes suggest a certain degree of incompetence. We almost never hear similar jokes about the men’s careers. This paradigm is frightening to me. The suggestion is clear. Women aren’t serious scientists while the men are. In contrast, the men are usually mocked for their social and emotional struggles while the women act as guides in these areas. This represents a dangerous socially constructed idea that men are good at science and math and bad at “touchy-feely stuff” while the reverse is true for women. It's the 21st century. That's really NOT OKAY anymore.

I believe that the show can do better, though. It's already come leaps and bounds from having a single female character who was portrayed largely as eye candy without many strong character features to having almost equal gender representation with women as varied as the men that made up the original cast. But if The Big Bang Theory seriously means to improve the representation of women, particularly in science, the writers must make an effort to stop trivializing, demonizing, and mocking the scientific accomplishments of its female scientists. The women on the show need to be taken seriously both as scientists and as characters and must be seen as more than extensions of the male characters.