Anakin Starkiller said:
There’s no such thing as a strong female character; only a strong character.

I like this comment, though the thread title is fine and required in order to only talk about strong characters that are female 😛

screams in the void said:
good point . I am going to leave the title of the thread as is though as I feel female characters in Star Wars movies were grossly under represented in the OT…Leia being the only main female character , and it’s nice to see this changing and seeing more of a female presence to give more avatars for the female audience to plug themselves into .

Strong OT characters that are female:

Princess Leia will always take the cake of course
Mon Mothma

As far as OT representation goes:

Princess Leia
Mon Mothma
Aunt Beru
Oola
Sy Snootles (SE I know but it’s still a female character in the OT)
Yarna d’al’ Gargan
TESB Echo Base Map-Reading Woman
Various background females at the Cantina, Cloud City and Jabba’s Palace

*Source for the names of the last few (that I remember but never knew their name) and others that fall into the various background category: https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/women-in-star-wars

Yeah, not a lot of representation still but a little bit more than you might casually think. You’re probably aware also that there were originally meant to be 3 female Xwing pilots in 1977 ANH but they were later edited out, apparently due to the thought of how seeing female Xwings getting blown up on screen might be received. Definitely still pretty obvious that the movies were originally targeted at boys and young males in times where it was thought they would be the only ones really interested in such a movie.

Val