Avenger of the Week | Gillian Anderson as The X-Files' Dana Scully

From its beginning in the early 1990s, a concept called “The Scully Effect” grew out of the highly successful The X-Files TV series, which featured Gillian Anderson as the serious, whip-smart FBI agent and medical doctor Dana Scully, a true equal female partner to her male counterpart, Fox Mulder. ”The Scully Effect” is the idea that this groundbreaking role for a woman as an investigating agent and medical scientist would be a role model for young women and girls in the audience. Research has proved that “The Scully Effect” is real, and we salute Gillian Anderson as her character Dana Scully as our Avenger of the Week.

According to research financed by 20th Century Fox and conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, the Scully character encouraged girls and women to focus on STEM – science, technology, engineering, and math in their schooling and career choices. The Institute’s slogan is “If she can see it, she can be it”.

The 2,021 participants in the study were either teenagers or young women during the series original 10-year TV run, two full-length movies, and a more recent two-year stint. Almost two-thirds (63%) of the women who were familiar with Dana Scully said she increased their belief in the importance of STEM, and 50% of those same women say Scully increased their interest in STEM. Those who were moderate or frequent viewers of The X-Files considered working in STEM fields (43%), actually studied in STEM fields (37%), and work in STEM fields (24%).

Anderson has said that there really wasn’t anyone like Scully on television in 1993. “And so, to suddenly have an appealing, intelligent, strong-minded female who was appreciated by her pretty cool male coworker was an awesome thing to behold, and I think that a lot of young women said, ‘That’s me. I’m interested in that. I want to do that. I want to be that.’”

The X-Files writer Shannon Hamblin said, “When you start to see female characters who don’t play into caricatures, and what their position is with a man in the same scene, it’s like, no, they’re both equal, they’re both human beings."

Both “The Scully Effect” and the Geena Davis Institute’s motto — “If she can see it, she can be it” — speak to the same reality: if girls and women can see themselves publicly reflected in positions that honour their intelligence and power, even if those positions in fields like STEM are traditionally male-dominated, it is much more likely that they will be able to imagine not only women in general but also themselves in those positions. The X-Files may have only put a fictional woman at a fictional STEM table, but the ongoing “Scully Effect” puts actual women at those actual tables in the real world. Dana Scully’s legacy proves that there is great power in telling stories that include women as men’s equals in public space. If she can see it, indeed.

Congratulate Avenger of the Week Gillian Anderson!

“To suddenly have an appealing, intelligent, strong-minded female who was appreciated by her pretty cool male coworker was an awesome thing to behold.” —@GillianA on @thexfiles’ Dana Scully, the @GenderAvenger #AvengerOfTheWeek! #STEM #GenderAvenger https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/avenger-of-the-week-gillian-anderson