One Woman in the Justice League
Just one woman, maybe two, in a team or group of men.
Also watch Jimmy Kimmel’s "Muscle Man’ superhero skit - “I’m the girly one”
The Avengers:
In Marvel Comics:
“Labeled “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes,” the original Avengers consisted of Iron Man, Ant-Man, Hulk, Thor and the Wasp. Captain America was discovered trapped in ice in The Avengers issue #4, and joined the group after they revived him.”
5 / 6 original members are male. Only one is female.
Modern films (MCU):
The original 6 Avengers were Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, and Black Widow.
Again, 5 / 6 original members are male. Only one is female.
Justice League
In DC comics:
“The Justice League originally consisted of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and Aquaman”
6 / 7 original members are male. Only one is female.
In modern films (DCEU):
The members were/are Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Cyborg. (+ introducing Martian Manhunter (in Zack Snyder’s Justice League director’s cut))
5 / 6 main members in both versions of the Justice League film are male, with appearances by a 7th member in the director’s cut who is also male. Only one member is female.
The Umbrella Academy (comics and show)
7 members:
- Luther (Number One / Spaceboy)
- Diego (Number Two / The Kraken)
- Allison (Number Three / The Rumor)
- Klaus (Number Four / The Séance)
- Five (Number Five / The Boy)
- Ben (Number Six / The Horror)
- Vanya (Number Seven / The White Violin) Later becomes known as Viktor and nonbinary in the television adaptation after Elliot Page’s transition but that’s not really relevant to this.
Here, 5 / 7 original members are male. Only two are female. Only slightly better than the other more famous superhero teams, and they had to add another member (compared to Avengers’ 6 members) to improve the ratio (maybe executives still demanded to have 5 males).
Now let’s look at some sitcoms and other stories.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
4 males, and 1 female slightly less prominent character who is abused constantly. The show claims to be politically aware and satirical but gets away with a lot of misogynistic comedy, tbh, that I’m willing to bet a lot of people are finding funny for the wrong reasons.
Community:
Jeff, Britta, Abed, Troy, Annie, Pierce, Shirley. This one is a little better, 3/7 are female. Notice it’s always more males though, they never let it become more than 50% female, or else then it’s a “chick flick” or a “female team up” or “gender flipped” story. And of course the main character, and the leading few characters, are almost always male or mostly male.
Stranger Things:
Main original group of kids consisted of: Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas, and El (Eleven). 1 original female member, who is comparable to an alien and even plays the role of E.T. in direct homage. When they added Max, I saw people complaining that although they liked her, there should be only one female member. 🤦
Why is it ‘iconic’ to have only one female in a group of males? Does that just mean it’s the tradition, the way it’s always been? Can’t we change that? Is it so that all the men can have a chance with the one girl, or so the males can always dominate the discussion with their use of force and manliness? Or so that whenever the team saves the day, it’s mostly a bunch of men doing it, but with ‘a little help’ from a female/a few females (at most), too!
It’s so fucked up and disgusting to me I’ve realised. And men don’t seem to care. I’m a male and this is really disturbing to me now that I’ve woken up to it. How do women feel about this? Am I overreacting?
An interesting counter point to this.
Kids movies, I’m a dad, I only have boys. Trying to find new movies that have good male parts is challenging. There are plenty of “girl empowerment” movies, but ones with good role models for boys are few and far between.
Everything is based around violence. Like really, is that all boys are good for?
I appreciate what you’re saying, however:
Women are, regardless of any other stat, still under-represented. 2000-2009 is depressing.
Yes, it’s not a counter point but rather an also important parallel discussion. We need to have higher standards for male role models, or we will continue to have incels fill the space.
I suppose the counter point is actually.
Why are there so many female leads in kid focused movies and so few female leads in adult focused movies.
What changes? Why do we lose out on these stories?
That does not seem to be what research shows, but rather your personal experience:
For animated children movies, I found that 80 % male leads are reported for 1990-2020. Source
Couldn’t find data for children movies in general.
And I found for children books that there is still a slight male overrepresentation on average but in general it being around 50 %for the last few years. Source, search for “Fig. 2”
Yes. It is my experience.
I am looking at the last 9 years (my oldest is 9); I agree, when I was a kid in the 80’s, most movies were male focused.
If we restrict the dataset to big popular kids movies in the last decade; it is either a female empowerment movie or a movie based around violence.
As for kids books, in Harry Potter (my oldest boys favorite books) his favorite character is Hermione. Because she is brave, smart and gets shit done; Harry is brave and good at sports…
Even when the stories are male focused, the characters are still two dimensional.
Same for kids books. It’s great for my daughter, but it’s hard to find good movies and books for her younger brother.
First, I’m confused as to why you’d need to segregate books and film by gender, these all have either a male or non-gendered lead: Captain Underpants, Nate the Great, Hal The 3rd Class Hero, The Hobbit, The Lord of The Rings, Treasure Island, Danny the Champion of the World, The Outsiders, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Percy Jackson (all 40 billion of the series), The Giving Tree, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Bridge to Terabithia, James and the Giant Peach, Holes (series), Where The Wild Things Are, The Heroes of Olympus (more Percy Jackson I think), Ender’s Game, Winnie The Pooh, Narnia (series), The Wind In The Willows, The Indian in the Cupboard, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Neverending Story, I Am Every Good Thing, Don’t Hug Doug (He Doesn’t Like it), King Arthur’s Very Great Grandson, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Wild Robot (series), Stuart Little, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, George’s Marvellous Medicine, Lord of The Flies, Calvin and Hobbes (series), The Dangerous Book for Boys, The American Boys Handy Book.
(You didn’t specify age, so I tried to add our family suggestions for about 4-12. Once he’s older, depending on your thoughts on the language, we also have a lot of suggestions for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn)
I don’t accept the premise of the question. People don’t complain about female led movies, as long as those movies are well written. What people complain about (and this should include people looking for increased female representation) is projects that prioritise having female leads over having good writing.
Take the trend of gender swapped existing male characters into female ones. If, as a writer, you’re prepared to follow through on that concept and explore how it changes the story, then it can be interesting. A chance to experiment with the differences in motivation between genders and how obstacles can be navigated in different ways.
If you’re just going to swap “he” for “she” in the script and call it a day… Well that’s boring and doesn’t deserve anyone’s time. It’s not interesting or clever. In fact it’s often bad take. You can end up with a woman on screen showing that to be a hero they have to display hyper-masculine traits. How is that a good female role model?
I prefer it when the gender doesn’t matter, and that the hero doesn’t need to prove anything to the audience. They’re just well-written and we’re invested in their motivations and the wider story around them.
A good example of this is the excellent She-Ra cartoon. I can’t think of many good examples beyond that sadly…
Ellen Ripley’s gender doesn’t matter until Resurrection, which isn’t the highlight of the movie.
A lot of media have strong female characters but their gender or sex does matter for the story so can’t easily be replaced
Susan in the book Soul Music (plus some others) as well as the Witches, Tiffany Achings and more from Pratchett
Death from Sandman (even though the author is very controversial, but you could check the books out from sources that doesn’t give him a kick back)
Was a long time since I read them but the Polgara books feature a strong female protagonist
We got classic youth/kids media that shows strong female characters even if some stuff are coloured by weird takes (Such as Xander Harris): Xena, Buffy and Pippi Longstockings
imo
Main Points
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most people (including most men) do not actually give a fuck.
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a tiny insignificant group mumbling in a dark corner probably do care, but noone should give a shit or listen to them.
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instead their voice is amplified in social/legacy media as a typical divide and conquer tactic (men vs women is ‘powerful’ as its half the planet vs the other half).
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unoriginal drones parrot those amplifications because they’ll get angry about whatever their screens tell them to this week.
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society has leaned male-dominant for too long, so genuine efforts to be fair are perceived by some idiots (see #2,#4) as “unfair”.
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corporations don’t actually give a shit about equality, so their maliciously half-arsed pretense at fairness rings hollow, adding more fuel to the flames.
Bonus
If you want to know more about this problem in general, see the Bechdel test, once you see it, you can’t unsee it everywhere you go:
The test asks whether a work features at least two female characters who have a conversation about something other than a man.
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Because the majority of dudes complaining are incel man babies who need to feel like they are the focus of society. If its not exactly how they like it its not right. Its time we start shouting down on them loudly.
And if you dare question their masculinity by suggesting a woman might be able to do something other than be eye candy then they’ll… well I don’t know what they’ll do. Probably just complain about it on social media.
They become president and burn the country down
I found they usually huff until nearly shitting themselves before schoffing once more.
Sometimes, they’ll start a podcast or a YouTube channel. Those ones are the worst.
Once female speaking time reaches 30% or more, males believe that the females are dominating the speaking time.
Female encroachment on what has traditionally been considered male spaces is not taken well. Female empowerment is considered taking from deserving males.
Essentially the general male population don’t like females, and only tolerate them as a subservient subclass who should be seen and not heard.
EDIT: This should probably annoy you a little too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt2qCjL6-n4
And it may also explain why people complain that there should only ever be one female character - it minimises the chances of males having to watch two females interact, because that would be excluding the male experience and they couldn’t possibly relate to two females interacting.
EDIT2: comments in that video do claim there are more scenes… whether or not that really adds much is up to you.
