James Bond and women: why the misogynist label is wrong

James Bond may have issues with women, but the evidence doesn’t point to misogyny.

James Bond (Daniel Craig) and Paloma (Ana de Armas) in No Time to Die © 2020 DANJAQ, LLC AND MGM

“Sexist, misogynist dinosaur.” Judi Dench’s M fires the line at 007 in Goldeneye like a warning shot across a changing decade, and the label stuck. Years later, Daniel Craig described Bond as a misogynist in interviews. They’re strong, memorable words, and useful shorthand for the franchise’s self-critique. But does the “misogynist” label – someone who hates women – really fit?

Definitions matter

Let’s start with definitions. Misogyny is animus toward women – contempt, hostility, a fixed belief that women are fundamentally lesser or deserving of punishment. Sexism and chauvinism are  assumptions of male superiority, patronising behaviour, and confining women to prescribed roles. Bond plainly exhibits sexist habits and old-school chauvinism at times: the quips, the casual entitlement, the power-imbalanced seductions. But hatred? Across the books and films he repeatedly admires, loves, trusts, and relies on women – often staking his life on them. That pattern isn’t really consistent with misogyny at all, although some of Fleming’s writing showed how toxic that era could be.

Fleming’s Bond

Ian Fleming wrote Bond as a capable professional with damaged edges. The novels include attitudes that grate today – broad generalisations about women and some passages that curdle on rereading. But they also give us a man who treats women as individuals with agency. Bond respects competence. He listens to Gala Brand in Moonraker, trusts Domino in Thunderball, and recognises Tiffany Case’s resilience in Diamonds Are Forever.

Most telling is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Bond doesn’t just bed Teresa di Vicenzo; he marries her. He’s drawn to her wit, courage, and vulnerability, and he throws in his lot entirely. Even The Spy Who Loved Me – controversial for other reasons – shows Bond from a woman’s perspective as a respectful, protective presence in a crisis. If misogyny were his operating system, you wouldn’t find this through-line of attachment, admiration, and sacrifice.

Of course in Casino Royale, Bond’s thought that making love to Vesper would have “the sweet tang of rape” is ugly.  After her death he lashes out – “The bitch is dead now” – because he’s broken, not because he hates women. Worse is The Spy Who Loved Me, narrated by Viv Michel, who writes “All women love semi-rape.” The claim is Fleming at his worst, smuggling a generalisation through a female voice. But also notice that, also through Viv’s eyes, Bond is a respectful, protective presence in a crisis.

Early films: charm as a mask

The 1960s and early 1970s films layer a comedy varnish over behaviours that today read as worse than merely old-fashioned. The barn scene in Goldfinger and the coercive dynamic with nurse Patricia Fearing in Thunderball are difficult, full stop. They encode a cultural norm that assumed women wanted to be overruled by a “man who knows best” and the films ask us to laugh along.

Even here, though, the series repeatedly pairs Bond with women who are skilled and central to the mission. Consider Tracy in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (again), Aki in You Only Live Twice, and—jumping ahead—Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me. The narrative frequently places Bond side-by-side with women who match him. He doesn’t shun them, resent them, or sabotage them; he partners with them. The problem is inconsistency: moments of genuine respect sit alongside gags and seductions that age badly.

The course correction: Dalton to Craig

Timothy Dalton toned down the lounge-lizard persona and leaned into professionalism. Pam Bouvier in Licence to Kill isn’t a prize; she’s a partner. Pierce Brosnan’s run, beginning with Goldeneye, makes the critique explicit. M labels Bond a “relic of the Cold War” precisely because the franchise is opening the windows: Moneypenny calls out office behaviour; Natalya Simonova is the moral centre of the story; and the film frames Bond’s charm as something that must adapt or die.

The Craig era goes further. It interrogates Bond’s emotional damage and positions women as peers with their own agendas. Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale is not simply “the girl”; she’s the equal who sees through him and outplays him. Skyfall stumbles with Sévérine – one of the series’ ugliest misjudgements – yet in the same film M is the mission’s true stakes, and Bond’s loyalty to her is unconditional. SPECTRE and No Time To Die give us Madeleine Swann as a full human being with history and agency, Nomi as a 00 who doesn’t defer to Bond, and Paloma who breezes in, knocks the job out in ten minutes, and breezes out again with her dignity intact.

The line and the stance

So what do we do with “sexist, misogynist dinosaur”? M’s line is a managerial broadside used to jolt an old operative into a new world where HR exists and geopolitics has changed shape. The film itself undermines the literal charge by surrounding Bond with women who are competent and morally centred, and by making the villain’s nihilism the true rot in the system.

Craig describing Bond as a misogynist perhaps helped him lean into the character’s guardedness, his transactional relationships, his inability to trust. But his films don’t present a man who hates women. They present a man who compartmentalises, who uses casual sex to avoid intimacy, and who slowly, painfully, relearns trust. When he loses Vesper, he collapses into cynicism; when he commits to Madeleine, he risks everything to protect her and Mathilde. That’s fear, grief, and growth, not misogyny.

Depiction vs endorsement

One more distinction to bear in mind: depiction isn’t endorsement. Bond’s world depicts sexist behaviour and the early films often play coercion as a joke and invite the laugh. But the long arc of the series moves away from reward-for-conquest and toward partnership, consequence, and respect. Even when the storytelling stumbles, the character’s through-line – trusting, loving, and collaborating with women – contradicts the idea that he despises them.

So what is Bond?

If we must label James Bond, “chauvinist” seems closer to the truth than “misogynist.” He’s a professional with a bruised heart, raised in an era that taught bad habits, who nonetheless recognises excellence in others, including women, and often defers to it. He falls in love, he marries, he mourns. He follows women’s leads when they’re the expert in the room. He can be crass, entitled, and wrong. But hatred of women isn’t the engine of James Bond. If you’re looking for misogyny, you don’t need to squint – Andrew Tate and his imitators wear it openly. Bond is something else: a flawed chauvinist under pressure to change.