Gillian Anderson on the impact her character Scully (from The X Files) had on women in STEM

👋 am one of them

Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully 

“[The Scully Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Scully#%22The_Scully_Effect%22)”

The character is believed by some to have initiated a phenomenon referred to as “The Scully Effect,” as the character’s role as a [medical doctor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_doctor) and [FBI Special Agent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Special_Agent) inspired many young women to pursue careers in [science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science), [medicine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine), [engineering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering), and [law enforcement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement), and as a result brought a perceptible increase in the number of women in those fields. At the 2013 [San Diego Comic-Con](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Diego_Comic-Con), Anderson noted that she has long been aware of “The Scully Effect” and stated: “We got a lot of letters all the time, and I was told quite frequently by girls who were going into the medical world or the science world or the FBI world or other worlds that I reigned, that they were pursuing those pursuits because of the character of Scully. And I said, ‘Yay!'” [Anne Simon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Simon), a biology professor and a science adviser for the series recalls: “I asked my Intro Bio class back then how many of them were influenced by the character of Scully on *The X-Files* to go into science and half of the hands in the room went up. That’s huge! That was saying that the show was really having an effect.” “The Scully Effect” remains a subject of academic inquiry.