Where are all the female-cen­tric sur­vival stories?

Let’s gath­er around the camp­fire and dis­cuss a glar­ing imbal­ance in a sub-genre that’s poised to take a vic­to­ry lap this awards sea­son: the sur­vival pic­ture. Both The Mar­t­ian and The Revenant cen­tre around men bat­tling the ele­ments while strand­ed in unchar­tered and unfor­giv­ing envi­ron­ments. We watch them endure extreme men­tal and phys­i­cal trau­ma as they’re forced to call upon some untapped pri­mal instinct in order to get back home. And it’s pret­ty thrilling.

But why aren’t there more sto­ries about solo women going through sim­i­lar ordeals? With­in the sur­vival genre, women make for great focal points (the rea­son to get back home), guides (the one who helps to point the man home) and dead loves (the emo­tion­al core of the man, a spir­i­tu­al cheer­leader to keep him going). Yet few female pro­tag­o­nists get the chance to shine on their own.

In recent years, films like Grav­i­ty, Wild and Tracks have all fea­tured intel­li­gent women equipped, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly pre­pared – as their male coun­ter­parts are – to face the unknown. The hero­ines of both Wild and Tracks elect to ven­ture into the wilder­ness, thus high­light­ing a com­mon thread in female-led sur­vival pic­tures: women seek­ing spir­i­tu­al heal­ing. Women get to grit their teeth in ser­vice of Moth­er Nature while men chan­nel their inner beast as a means to sur­vive. In this way, we learn to accept women sur­viv­ing in the wild – there is often lit­tle dra­ma in the choic­es they make.

Then there’s the issue of how these male and female pro­tag­o­nists are char­ac­terised. Where The Martian’s Mark Wat­ney retains a sense of humour and has no famil­ial or roman­tic ties, Gravity’s Ryan Stone (is her gen­der-neu­tral name sup­posed to sig­nal an innate sur­vival abil­i­ty and assuage our con­cern?) is a griev­ing moth­er and ever-seri­ous sci­en­tist, emo­tion­al­ly and (lit­er­al­ly) spa­tial­ly paral­ysed by her predica­ment. And where Wat­ney gets the even­tu­al ben­e­fit of an entire team aid­ing his res­cue, Stone gets Ghost Clooney.

Wat­ney and Stone ulti­mate­ly do what they have to do in order to sur­vive. Yet their respec­tive char­ac­ter­i­sa­tions speak vol­umes about why women get such short shrift in this genre. We’re repeat­ed­ly told that men are fit for raw sur­vival while women are left to their per­son­al growth arcs – doesn’t this go against the very nature of, well, nature? Audi­ences will hap­pi­ly watch a teenage girl lead a dystopi­an rev­o­lu­tion or wit­ness women car­ry out dan­ger­ous, covert gov­ern­ment work, and yet Hol­ly­wood seems reluc­tant to green-light the kinds of sto­ries that would allow women to fash­ion a horse car­cass sleep­ing bag or farm their own space potatoes.

This isn’t a case of sim­ply show­ing that women are just as capa­ble as men when it comes to worst-case sce­nario sur­vival, but rather address­ing gen­der inequal­i­ty across the film indus­try by cre­at­ing more inter­est­ing lead roles for women.

Would you like to see more female-cen­tric sur­vival pic­tures? Let us know @LWLies