When I decided to study geology, I had only seen two movies with female geologists: Volcano and Jurassic Park. They did not exactly convey what working as a geologist is like (thank goodness!). Would a student starting today have better examples? And exactly how many movies are there with female geologists anyway – do they have anything in common? Are these realistic depictions?
Leaning into my obsessive side, I decided to watch (and rewatch) every movie with a female geologist I could find (I limited it to English-speaking theatrical releases and skipped some geologist-absent scenes). The films spanned 60 years, with the first female geologist, Dr Maggie Sorenson, appearing in Crack in the World in 1965. In the 25 movies, there were 27 female geologists and around half could be considered main characters.
Here’s what I learned:
Female geologists are curious about the world around them and good in a crisis
Many of the characters were so undeveloped it was hard to identify any traits, but for those with more screen time, the most commonly shared attributes were curiosity, being good in a crisis, toughness, intelligence, dedication to their work, ability to hold their own among male counterparts and pragmatism.
I was fascinated to discover that the main character of my own novel Hollow Air – Sarah, a mineral exploration geologist – shares every one of these traits. Which begs the question, how much had I been influenced by these depictions without consciously realising it?
Had I stereotyped Sarah? But the other thing for most of these women is that the viewer is rarely exposed to other facets of their character that serve to make a person fully-fledged. Sarah is a flawed and complicated human, who is at times achingly vulnerable.
Of course, it is easier to fully explore the breadth of a character when you have 300 pages to work with, but some movies succeeded at this, particularly Japanese Story, Ammonite and Unconformity.
Palaeontologists are popular (thanks Jurassic Park)
Where specified, the geologists came from a number of different fields, the most frequent being palaeontology, a sub-discipline of geology. This is followed by the exciting disaster disciplines: seismology and volcanology.
There is also a sedimentologist, a geomorphologist, an oceanographer with a PhD in geology, a petroleum geologist and a mineral exploration geologist.
Two is too many female geologists
Many movies had multiple male geologists, but if there were two female geologists, one was destined for the chopping block. Sometimes so quickly they never even meet their counterpart – in Dante’s Peak Marianne is fridged with a lava bomb to the head at the five-minute mark to give the male geologist a tragic backstory.
The exception is Ammonite, where the main focus of the movie is the relationship between these two historical women.
The representation is woeful
Out of the 27 geologists, there seems to be only one woman of colour, which is, ironically, the only thing Bio-Dome – often deemed one of the worst films ever made – is getting right. However, she is a supporting character.
Hers is also the only movie in the first three and a half decades where the geological woman is not a love interest. All of the female geologists are able-bodied. Even women who are short-sighted are rare, and wearing glasses is used to show that a character lacks confidence – in the case of Wonder Woman 1984, the geologist removes them as soon as she gains power and prestige.
Ammonite is the only movie with expressly LGBTQIA+ geologists.
Sexism was either overt or oddly absent
In the comedy movies, films with a humorous character or if James Bond is present, the sexism is rampant. In A View to a Kill and The Dukes of Hazzard the geological women can only be described as a ‘sex prize’ the men get to win at the end of the movie. RocketMan is not much better.
In most of the other movies, sexism towards the geological women is absent or quite subtle, which is surprising, given the experiences of some women working in male-dominated industries (one has only to look at the recent inquiry into sexual harassment in the FIFO mining industry).
It seems there is no middle ground, where gender differences form the uncomfortable foundation of the story, something that underlies the narrative in Hollow Air.
However, this does seem to be changing in some of the post MeToo movies where structural sexism is more likely to be illuminated.
These stories are becoming more popular and realistic
Most decades feature one movie with a main character female geologist. The 90s, the golden age of disaster movies, held the record for many years, with five, most at the helm of action movies. But the 2020s has also hit five already, with the decade only half over, and these movies have four of the best developed characters.
People seem to be interested in stories with a woman geologist as the protagonist
Depictions are more realistic too. In Unconformity about a sedimentology PhD student conducting research in the Nevada desert: she wields a pick, uses a rock saw, examines thin sections and licks plenty of rocks. Ammonite shows its characters searching for fossils on the Jurassic Coast and engaged in the painstaking work of extracting them.
These narratives are squarely focused on the type of work a geologist does. We’ve come a long way since Dr Maggie Sorenson devoted her time to darning a male colleagues’ socks in Crack in the World.
My recommendations
What I’d show someone interested in studying geology – Unconformity (2022)
A complex character with a compelling story arc – Japanese Story (2003)
Two geological women survive and their relationship is fully explored – Ammonite (2020)
So silly but such a lot of fun (please ignore the science) – Volcano (1997)
A palaeontologist who takes charge in a hero role – The Thing (2011)
See where it all started (and be glad we are no longer there) – Crack in the World (1965)
