Is it bad to have no gender variety?

The main problem with gender bias in books or movies is not so much about parity or percentages, but about force. Whenever it seems forced is when things tend to go wrong and be received badly.

That is why most stories have a fairly even spread of genders, as something similar to our everyday experience is the least likely to appear to us artificial.

Now compare that to, for example, Ghostbusters. The first movie had an all-male lead team, with female secondary characters. At the time (1984) that matched people's everyday experience (women made up 25% of the workforce, so not having a woman in a small team was more the norm than the exception). The 2016 reboot turned all characters into women and received a shitstorm for it, because an all-women team in 2016 is untypical enough to appear forced and artificial.

Your cast is in the same territory by numbers. So the important question is: How natural is this particular constellation within your setting? If set in contemporary western society, two women working together independently of any men and against another team of women is unlikely by pure percentages (6.25% if the gender distribution were random), but with the tiniest of reasons (friends, etc.) is not unbelievably unusual. If we assume that women have 75% female friends, and see your protagonists and antagonists as two teams, the probability of this constellation works out to about 28% - enough to suspend disbelief because there are enough stories with other constellations around.

You might want to throw in enough male secondary characters to ensure that the absence of males is not suspicious (which means: appears to be making a point that you don't intend to make).

posted over 5 years ago

CC BY-SA 3.0

Tom‭

125 reputation 2 19 23 0

It is such a wonderful idea, I am doing it right now.

My story is 3 female protagonists who uncomfortably team up – frenemies. I made them all women because I wanted to see more women adventurers in sci-fi. And probably because I watched too much Charlie's Angels as a child, so … 3 women in spaaaace.

One of them I cheat and plot as male, then "Ripley" back to female. One is hyper-feminized, the third is cerebral and asexual. They are balanced across other spectrums too. One is action, one is guile, one is lawful. I wanted them to contrast because the story is really about their power dynamics in a rock-paper-scissors way. Making them all female somehow equalized their status so there is no "leader", it made the negotiations of power more transparent.

Just because everyone is the same gender, doesn't mean everyone is the same type.

Look at Sailor Moon – there is the smart one, and the fighting one, and the comedic one. Women can easily cover the full narrative range: hero, villain, sidekick, matriarch, vain, dumb, smart, good, evil, scientist, truck driver.

If you kind of want to do it, but it seems hard, or weird, or controversial, that is probably a good reason to try to do it.

Experimenting with reader expectations is a good thing. Deliberately breaking tropes, and discovering how a scene reads with a different cast, is going to stretch your skills as a writer. At the very least you will write characters with their personalities and archetypes first, and gendered baggage second.

What is the worst that could happen? The women get bored and hire a male receptionist.

posted over 5 years ago

CC BY-SA 3.0

wetcircuit‭

523 reputation 24 58 96 0

These days, anything could "come off to somebody as somehow sexist", but I don't see a clear path from one to the other. Specifically, a story with a predominantly female cast would not, by that fact alone, lend itself to well-justified accusations of sexism. Poorly-justified accusations are not worth the worry.
Treat your characters with respect (even the villains, as they "should" believe that they are not doing evil), and treat your readers with the same respect. Hard to go wrong doing that, I do believe.

posted over 5 years ago

CC BY-SA 3.0

System‭

3226 reputation 147 215 553 0

As a person who loves reading, I can tell you that I enjoyed so many books where main characters were male, even though I am a girl. I see personality in every character, and that's what matter, then you can relate yourself to anyone of them, not limiting your perception by gender frames.

posted over 5 years ago

CC BY-SA 3.0

AlexCrypto‭

5 reputation 0 1 1 0

Sexism, like racism, is about the larger constructs of power and not about individual feelings towards one category of people.

A man can be sexist towards women but a woman can not be sexist towards men (I expect lots of downvotes just for saying this...so be it).

Just like, in a place like the United States, a white person can be racist towards black people but a black person can not be racist towards white people.

Any of these people can be bigoted. Or rude. Or unworthy people due to their beliefs. I won't justify prejudice. But a member of an oppressed class can not oppress a member of the mainstream or ruling class.

With that background in mind, it really is different when you create a work that is solely or mostly about (or for) one group vs another.

Some male-based stories are fine. If you're writing about an all-male environment (boarding school, prison, priesthood), then it's normal not to have many female characters (there are generally a few). But choosing to make a story mostly all male in a location that has no reason for it is making a statement about the value of women, not just in the time and place, but to you.

If you make a mostly female story in an environment that calls for it, no problem. But if you choose to make a story mostly all female when the time and place doesn't need it, well that's okay too. Because you're focusing on traditionally under-represented characters.

Take a look at a work like Hidden Figures. Black female mathematicians and engineers in a workplace with few women or people of color (at least not in positions requiring higher education). The author of this nonfiction book chose this path because these were people whose stories had not been told.

If it were really the case that media depictions of gender were balanced, this might be a different answer. But you're, unfortunately, wrong about the 50-50 split. I suspect you are gravitating towards the sorts of works that interest you and these are more representative. Adding in a few extra female main characters is not going to tip the balance too far to the female side. Far from it.

posted over 5 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Cyn‭

1130 reputation 25 439 215 0