(From top) Ursula Andress, Honor Blackman, Shirley Eaton, Gemma Arterton

London, Sept. 21: For decades, the Bond girls who accompany 007 on his missions have been dismissed as sexist eye candy and lampooned for their suggestive names.

But now Barbara Broccoli, the joint owner and producer of the James Bond franchise, has publicly defended the depiction of women in the secret agent’s early adventures.

Broccoli, 48, who is the daughter of Cubby Broccoli, the founder of the franchise, said characters like Honey Rider, played by Ursula Andress in Dr No (1962), and Pussy Galore, played by Honor Blackman in Goldfinger (1964), were “progressive” role models.

She told The Sunday Telegraph: “The women were unique for their time. Pussy Galore, for instance, was a female pilot. A lot of them were sexual predators who gave as good as they got. They had professional careers and did extraordinary things. I think the early women were very progressive.”

Broccoli, whose comments brought an angry response from feminists last night, makes a distinction between the female characters who appeared alongside Sean Connery in 1960s and those who appeared opposite Roger Moore in the 1970s.

She accepts that the strong women of the 1960s were replaced by female characters who were little more than eye candy. She said: “The depiction of women has changed over the years. I think we went through a period later on when they became more window dressing. They were draped around swimming pools and that sort of thing.”

Many of the films famously feature silhouettes of naked or semi-clad women in their opening musical sequences. And some of the most famous lines are packed with sexual innuendo.

In Goldfinger, Bond, who is played by Sean Connery, tells Jill Masterson, played by Shirley Eaton, that “something big’s come up”.

In the 1967 film You Only Live Twice, which is set in Japan, one of the film’s female characters, Aki, tells Bond: “I think I will enjoy very much serving under you.”

In recent outings, Broccoli and her step-brother, Michael G. Wilson, who co-produces the films, have attempted to update the portrayal of women. The poster for the forthcoming film Quantum of Solace, to be released next month, is radically different from its predecessors and gives equal space to Daniel Craig and Gemma Arterton.