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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32846
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Personally I don't see any problem as long as "get physical" involves a weapon/power of some sort. If Eve is a master hacker who steals Bob's parents' life savings and Bob tracks her down and punches her in the face that would make me dislike Bob. If Bob tracks hacker Eve down and holds a gun on her until the police arrive, or Eve is a wizard who covers Bob's parents' farm in snow and there's an epic magic battle where Eve loses an eye, I'm still fine with Bob.

There are plenty of female villains that face male heroes--Azula in AtLA, Bellatrix and Umbridge in Harry Potter, Ventress and Zam Weisell in Star Wars--but who wins the battles doesn't have anything to do with men typically being physically stronger than women.

I would avoid creating minor female villains who are constantly defeated (especially if you have very few female characters to begin with--Scott Lynch is pretty good at having female characters if you need recs) and generally find petnames or sexual innuendo from the hero to the villain cringy if the hero has the upper hand.

There are some series like _The Black Company_ where many of the interactions between male and female characters are cringy for effect. I'd be very careful with this unless you're writing for a primarily male audience or have Glen Cook's world building ability.

Original score: 4