I mean, it was another time. Their first pilot had number one, and that didn’t fly. But that’s the point, it was another time, and staying stuck in that time will always have drawbacks. As the article points out, the TOS Kelvin timeline reboots don’t do well on the bechdel at all, and it’s not a coincidence. If SNW heads toward more TOS prequel/reboot territory, you’ll probably see it in bechdel data like this.
That was likely added to quell reactions to a woman as a first officer. But the Network had notes even so on how negatively test audiences reacted to Majel Barrett’s Number One.
Roddenberry tried another tack with blonde, beehived, Whitney in a miniskirt as Yeoman Janice Rand. She was supposed to be a woman main character but even that was too much for the executives and she was written out by the end of the first season.
Administration does not equal secretary, except in the old British usage where the Secretary to the Prime Minister is what’s now called a Chief of Staff.
A yeoman is one of the most senior NCOs, responsible for communication with command and the admiralty, also responsible for performance assessments of all the enlisted ranks and more junior NCOs.
Yeoman can rate from E-1 to E-9 so I’m not sure why you think they are only senior NCOs.
This is directly from a naval site:
General Description
Yeoman perform administrative and clerical work. They receive visitors, answer telephone calls and sort incoming mail. They type, organize files and operate modern office equipment such as word processing computers and copying machines.
What They Do
The duties performed by YNs include:
<span style="color:#323232;">Preparing, typing and routing correspondence and reports
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Organizing and maintaining files
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Receiving office visits and handling telephone communications
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Operating personal computers, word processing, duplicating, audio-recording and other office machines
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Performing office personnel administration
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Maintaining records and official publications
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Performing administrative functions for legal proceedings
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Serving as office managers
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Performing other various clerical and administrative duties
</span>
That’s a secretary, or more properly today an administrative assistant.
Their position would increase as they increased in rank but they are still just secretaries, even at the highest level.
On a ship with a captain who was a full captain, they would be a senior NCO.
This is false. In the documentary Carrier (2008) which follows the USS Nimitz on a deployment in the gulf they follow a yeoman, Shaneka McReed for some of it. She is promoted during the episode to E-4, Yeoman Petty Officer 3rd Class. She was a yeoman who served on the bridge of the carrier. (I just recently watched this which is why I thought you were incorrect on your description).
I don’t know about rank changing since the 60s other than in 2016 they no longer referred to sailors by their ratings, only their rank.
It’s tricky to know because technology has changed the nature of these jobs significantly, and Star Trek has tended to map to roles as they are, despite projecting further technology.
In the 60s, 70s & 80s, a Yeoman would have held the encryption keys and would have been responsible for interactions with command. (The Comms officer would have had communications engineering and codes, but not necessarily access to the highest command codes.)
Likewise, responsibility for personnel assessment and promotion recommendations among ratings was a senior NCO responsibility that interlinked with the responsibilities of the XO.
It’s easy to portray a lot of these jobs as ‘merely clerical’ and it can be a kind of erasure of the people of colour and women who were in these ratings.
It brings to mind the work of the WW2 Wrens who did all the naval gaming in the UK and in Halifax, modeling, innovating and teaching tactics to UK and allied navies, but who got no credit. Or the women ‘computers’ and code breakers at Bletchley. Their commanding officers got all the credit and they were erased.
Oh I’m not trying to diminish them, I actually think the administrative assistants and secretaries of the world do a million times more than the executives they support. Yeoman Rand probably does a ton of behind the scenes shit that keeps the ship running but on paper yeomen are assistants. They aren’t the decision makers even when they are assigned to a captain or XO. The decision maker would be the Command Master Chief. He works hand in hand with the command team and does a lot of administrative stuff too but he is more of a leader whereas a yeoman is more of a supporter. There are many quirks about the military like this so I don’t think it’s weird she’s on the bridge at all.