MI6 has appointed its first feminine chief. What took it goodbye? | Zoe Williams

MI6 hasn’t ever had a feminine head in its 116-year historical past – till now. How becoming that the primary girl will have to be referred to as Blaise Metreweli. That forename has all of it: derring-do (courtesy of Modesty Blaise), onomatopoeia, modernity.

Metreweli will take over within the autumn as C, the real-life model of M from James Bond. She lately runs Q department, MI6’s generation department, which it sounds as if is called after the Bond quartermaster. No fictional Q has ever been feminine, however in genuine lifestyles no less than two girls, together with Metreweli, are concept to have held the position. M can also be male or feminine, except for now they be successful or fail via how a lot they resemble Judi Dench, so they all, together with the incumbent, Ralph Fiennes, are de facto feminine.

In different phrases, whilst there’s a robust cultural presumption that the computer systems bro is certainly a bro, there is not any ambient fictional expectation that the pinnacle of the Secret Intelligence Service will have to be male. If it has taken the company greater than a century to tick this actual variety field, it has handiest itself responsible.

If you squint at it, it might be exactly on account of Ian Fleming, by way of his cinematic legacy, that the genuine MI6 has been so sluggish. M is a hard-to-please-parent archetype – Bond seeks M’s approval, but at some important juncture he all the time has to disobey M so as to self-actualise, making a heady cocktail of vexation and admiration that M, being in the long run a sensible and patriotic personality, manages to choke down within the pursuits of her majesty (smartly, his majesty now, however we don’t have time for whether or not or no longer heads of state are at an advantage male or feminine).

The display some distance prefers it when this stern however loving authority determine is a lady – Dench used to be not too long ago joined via Kristin Scott Thomas, the pinnacle of MI5 in Slow Horses, two bookends representing the total vary of everybody via whom a undercover agent would wish to learn off. In genuine lifestyles, although, it kind of feels an govt choice used to be made and not revisited till this yr: secret brokers can’t paintings for his or her proxy mum; they are able to settle for censure handiest from their fake dad.

If you take a look at the professions from which girls are usually excluded on the very best ranges, the grounds for exclusion are by no means the similar two times – it’s nearly as though there is not any fastened conception of femininity. Tech is particularly male-dominated, at the assumption that girls aren’t going to get it as it’s too demanding, but will damage issues via being too serious-minded. Yes, it’s demanding to sq., but it surely’s helpfully distilled in Mountainhead, Jesse Armstrong’s newest satire, which includes a retreat that abides via the guideline “no meals, no deals, no heels”. Nutrition, trade and gender variety would kill the vibe.

In politics, anyplace it’s inconceivable for a lady to be elected – in the United States, it’s the highest process; in the United Kingdom, it’s the Labour celebration – it’s in most cases as a result of she is just too “schoolmarmish”. This is all the time delivered as a private critique of a person girl, as though Hillary Clinton or Harriet Harman were born beneath an unfortunate big name, too on the subject of the blackboard or the critical hairline. The genuine objection – the MI6-adjacent “I love women and some of my best friends are women, I just don’t like it when they have authority over me” – will have to stay as unstated as it’s glaring.

In boardrooms, girls are thought to be an obstacle for the other characteristics: no longer sufficient authority, an excessive amount of amiability, no longer sufficient killer intuition, an excessive amount of human sympathy. Research has proven again and again that gender variety on forums is related to better income, so the choice to exclude girls is only emotional, which is a adorable irony, for the reason that it’s intended to be girls who mess the whole lot up via being too emotional.

I might have means much less of an issue with gender-exclusionary offices if they might pick out a lane and determine precisely what the problem is, between girls being too critical and no longer critical sufficient, too authoritative and too flaky. Metreweli no doubt rose to the highest via ignoring such silliness and powering thru; just right good fortune to her.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist