Women as Great People

yisheng

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 24, 2013
Messages
24
I'm hoping that with the new expansion, there's also an addition of women to the Great People list.

Women are currently completely absent from the Great Artists list, even though there are lots of female writers and artists who are super-important - poets like Enheduanna, the first recorded writer in history; authors like Murasaki Shikibu, creator of the world's first psychological novel, and artists like Frida Kahlo, perhaps Mexico's most famous painter.

So far, the Great Works list hasn't included any works by women either.

I don't think Firaxis should try for gender equity here (how many female Great Admirals can you name? Ching Shih, maybe?). But it can't hurt to include a few women's names in the mix.

Update: Full list of Great People here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=472333

There are female Great Merchants, Great Generals and Great Scientists (lots of scientists).
There are no female Great Admirals, Great Engineers and Great Artists.
 
Joan of Arc as a Great General could work. Boudica is already a leader so she can't be one, hmm...

Madame Curie would be a Great Scientist, but I can't really think of anyone else on my feet.

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Hmm I agree that does look like a bit of an oversight not including women. I assume they did it to avoid having to make a female model of each great person.

It would be nice to include as the next expansion does more focus on great artists and so forth. But in all honesty, do you even look at their name? :)
 
Hmm I agree that does look like a bit of an oversight not including women. I assume they did it to avoid having to make a female model of each great person.

It would be nice to include as the next expansion does more focus on great artists and so forth. But in all honesty, do you even look at their name? :)

Well not maybe before, but now they have their most famous work tied to them so you will also notice their name.

Artemisia could be a great admiral. She was serving in the Persian army.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_I_of_Caria
 
Hmm I agree that does look like a bit of an oversight not including women. I assume they did it to avoid having to make a female model of each great person.

It would be nice to include as the next expansion does more focus on great artists and so forth. But in all honesty, do you even look at their name? :)


Of course, I am very honored when Shakespeare or Hugo is born to my empire.
 
Yeah, Joan of Arc and Marie Curie are on the list.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=472333

There are women among the Great Merchants, Great Generals and Great Scientists (lots of scientists in fact!) but none among the Great Admirals, Great Engineers and Great Artists.

I know it's a small issue, but I figured it's an easy fix, and I might as well mention it here in case the developers are listening.
 
I suspect we'll see a number of female Great Artists in Brave New World since it's being split in to three great people and will therefore need a much larger list of names. I would be pretty surprised if, for example, Mary Shelley doesn't make the Great Writer list. She's kind of important, started a genre and all.
 
I recall popping joan of arc as great generals.
 
As the graphics get more and more detailed and less icons, it gets harder to put female names to obviously male units.

The units are all Caucasian and male either way, even though for a lot of civs that doesn't make any sense. That all Great People look the same is more of a gameplay thing anyway, the icon looks like a wizard for god's sake.

I remember seeing Rosalind Franklin and Mary Leakey in G&K too. It is pretty strange that there are no Great female Artists.
 
I have to admit that this hadn't even occurred to me until now, but this is indeed something I'd like to see in the expansion. I expect that there will be some female Great Painters/Writers/Musicians as it's one of the areas where historically there are so, so many women to choose from.

I would hope though that any woman (or man) and her (or his) Great Work are added on the basis of merit rather than a misguided attempt for equal representation.

For Writers, I'd be stunned if we didn't see figures such as Hildegard of Bingen, Christine de Pizan, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Harper Lee. I'd also really like Marie de France, Mary Astell, Beatrix Potter, Maya Angelou, J.K. Rowling (too soon? :lol: ) and quite a few others.

It's a lot harder to think of female painters who have genuinely achieved the sort of recognition you would expect from a Great Artist. Frida Kahlo, Tamara de Lempicka, Barbara Hepworth...? Of course my examples are all Western-centric, but I'm struggling here.

As for musicians, there are hundreds of contemporary examples, but copyright might be a problem there...
 
Musicians could take from the large amount of female singers, so people like Maria Callas or Ella Fitzgerald.
 
I suspect female artists, writers, or musicians are an inevitability. Mary Shelley seems quite likely, for example. I don't think it was intentional that they were left out before now since they do appear in other great people lists.
 
While I can't see them going overboard here it would be nice to see some additions.

Rosalind Franklin as a great scientist would be nice, much overlooked in the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. If she hadnt died at such an early age of ovarian cancer she would surely have been recognised alongside Crick and Watson.



Edit: oh crap didn't see the list she is there
 
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