History Main / TheSmurfettePrinciple

* Occurs with "Lola" in Creator/WilliamElectronics' ''Pinball/{{Taxi}}'' pinball, the only female character in the game.

* The Dino Attack Team in Roleplay/DinoAttackRPG has had 241 named agents over the course of seven and a half years, out of whom only 20 are female. While we're at it the medicinal department has fifteen major characters out of whom only four are women. There are still a number of female NPCs outside the team, though.

* Like its source material, the 2011 film ''Film/{{Tintin}}'' exemplifies this trope. It has only a handful of female characters, and only two of them (Tintin's landlady Mrs. Finch and opera singer Bianca Castafiore) have names, dialogue, or any importance to the plot.

[[folder:Film]]
* Jennifer Parker in the ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' films. Creator/RobertZemeckis and Bob Gale say that had they intended to do a sequel at the time they made the original film, they would not have put "the girl" in the car at the end. Sure enough, in the second film, she's sedated less then five minutes in and pretty much spends the rest of the series that way.

*** Marla also represents all the preconceptions the protagonist has towards women, attributing a mysterious, sinister motive to her presence when there was none. The protagonist acts like a little boy toward her, as though he's afraid of catching cooties from her, and resents her interrupting him playing with the boys. If the protagonist had reached out to Marla, instead of allowing his resentment toward women blind him to their similarities, this whole mess could have been averted.

* ''Film/TransformersRevengeOfTheFallen'' has exactly one female Autobot, who gets one short line and appears on screen for the entirety of thirty-eight seconds (before getting blasted away), making her appearance more or less a cameo. Then again, as one needs to keep in mind when it comes to Transformers, we're talking about robots.

** After the ThereIsAnother line in ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'' someone suggested to Creator/MarkHamill that the mysterious second Jedi might be Leia. Hamil joked that she had too much power already. "She's the only woman in the universe! If you don't make it with her, you're a monk!"

** It affects the merchandise, too. Toy producer Hasbro has always been reluctant to make action figures based on Padmé's various gowns, but have settled for releasing one a year. It's somewhat justified by the fact that most of Padmé's outfits don't easily lend themselves to ''action'' figures. But if Alien Extra #5 is getting a toy, well...

** In the Creator/RalphBakshi [[WesternAnimation/TheLordOfTheRings animated version]], the only female character with a speaking part is Galadriel. The only others to even appear are [[ActionGirl Eowyn]] (who gets a few seconds of standing behind Theoden's shoulder) and a pair of unidentified women in the background of The Prancing Pony.

** It affects the merchandise, too. Toy producer Hasbro has always been reluctant to make action figures based on Padmé's various gowns, but have settled for releasing one a year. It's somewhat justified by the fact that most of Padme's outfits don't easily lend themselves to ''action'' figures. But if Alien Extra #5 is getting a toy, well...

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* This is lampshaded early on in the ''Webcomic/{{Insecticomics}}'' where Kickback claims that viewers had complained that the comic didn't have any female characters and uses this as a justification to vote to change Laserbeak's gender to female. Somehow.
* A LampshadeHanging occurred in [[http://exterminatusnow.comicgenesis.com/d/20060113.html this]] ''Webcomic/ExterminatusNow'' strip, along with heavy mocking and a fourth wall breakage.
* ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'''s eponymous group consists of four males (all of whom are better in melee than ranged), one female (ranged), and an elf (whose androgyny is a RunningGag, and who is not very good at physical combat at all), though other female characters have since become prominent ''supporting'' cast members, notably Celia.
* ''Webcomic/HannaIsNotABoysName'' has an almost all-male cast, with only one of the main characters a girl and another woman being a recurring villain.
* Erin is pretty much the only female character in the ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' webcomic ''Webcomic/UGMadness''. Then again, it IS a webcomic about a game with a predominantly male player base. Erin herself is very much aware of this, and thus has a very strong drive to prove herself.
* Inverted in ''[[http://amazoness.co.uk/ Amazoness!]]'', which is set in the mythical Amazon city of Themiskyra in which men are not allowed to step foot. The only men who have shown up so far are nameless mooks who exist only to be killed by the Amazons in battle. There is the matter of [[spoiler:Eutropia who is biologically male but psychologically female.]]
* The entire cast of ''WebComic/EightBitTheater'' contains a grand total of four female characters (White Mage, Kary, Bahamut's witch girlfriend, and princess Sara), only one of which is a major one. She is also the WhiteMagicianGirl, not quite a main character and by a wide margin the least powerful character. However, this is almost undoubtedly a result of the source material or a deliberate parody thereof.
** [[spoiler:However, in the end she kills the BigBad without the help of the men, who were too incompetent to do it themselves. This does not change the fact that every other important character is male, save one villain.]]
* Inverted in ''Webcomic/QuestionableContent'', where Marten was for a long time the only male character in the main cast, with five female characters all making frequent appearances. The cartoonist tends to {{lampshade| hanging}} this in TheRant whenever a new female character shows up: "Because all I need is another female character".
* In ''Webcomic/CtrlAltDel'', of the 4 people (and one penguin) living in the main characters' house, Lilah is the only female.
* The first two arcs of ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'' are basically just Elliot and Tedd doing stuff with Sarah appearing once or twice. However, this ends up massively subverted in the end as the next three major arcs introduce five more characters, only one of which is male.
* Inverted heavily in ''Webcomic/{{Drowtales}}'', where the female characters heavily outweigh the male ones both in numbers and importance. This is a deliberate attempt to correct the male-heavy presentation of the Drow in the ''Forgotten Realms'' setting, despite their matriarchal society. It also easily demonstrates just how flexible female characterization can be at its best, and how unnecessary this trope tends to be.
* Linda Concarne is the only female regular in ''Webcomic/TriangleAndRobert.'' Of course, no one can accuse her of being MsFanservice, since the characters are all shapes. She's a rectangle.
* Terra the earthworm in ''Webcomic/OneOverZero.'' This is lampshaded by the fact that the [[InteractiveNarrator Interactive Author]] initially didn't want any female characters because he wanted his male characters to remain romantically frustrated. When it became clear HoYay would be the inevitable result, he relented and added her — and made her a lesbian, so the guys would ''still'' be frustrated.
* Six Pack of Otters is something of an interesting case. We have not yet been introduced to all six of the Otters that the title implies...but of the five that we have met, four are male. And the fifth, female Otter's presence is felt mostly by the other four (male) cast-member's reaction to her: she's not unseen, but she hasn't had a whole ton of screen-time either. Made unusual because the author of the comic is female, and the setting is a college campus (i.e. there's no particular reason that the setting should include few females).
* Early on in ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'', Zoë was the only female character in the cast, and played the role of OnlySaneMan compared to the zany Riff & Torg and the SociopathicHero Bun-bun. Later on, however, Zoë's friend Gwynn joined the cast, as did female alien Aylee and female [[TalkingAnimal talking ferret]] Kiki. Combined with plenty of women being among the LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, this trope hasn't been in effect for some time.
* To the extent that ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'' has regular characters at all, Megan is the only female one. (And since it's a StickFigureComic, if she weren't called by name now and then [[TertiarySexualCharacteristics the only way to tell would be by her hair]].) Though by the same [[{{Pun}} token]], there's no way of knowing the stick figures with no indicated gender are male either.
* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' does an excellent job of averting this. The core groups of characters, such as the kids and the trolls are perfectly gender balanced. This tends to hold true for minor character groups (such as the Exiles, and, to a lesser extent, the guardians) as well. The only places where it's in effect are the Midnight Crew (0:4) and the Felt (1:14). Additionally, ascensions to God Tiers have been keeping the balance too, even with a degree of leaning to females.
[[/folder]]

** Inverted in "The Watchers" arc. The title organization has about nine members, and only one of them is male. He's the second-in-command, and is often teased by the female members for being the only guy. But this is probably the author's subversion and attempted attack on the Smurfette Principle. It seems to go against the themes of previous arcs, but The Watcher arc is written by a different author (the other arcs alternate between three other guys).
*** Oddly, the author behind The Watcher arc has a tendency to make fun of the other three authors by writing characters that are presented as male at first, but turn out later to be female...

* WebVideo/TheNostalgiaChick talks about this in a video titled "[[http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thedudette/nostalgia-chick/16616-the-smurfette-principle The Smurfette Principle]]". At that point, she was also an example of it, though two other women joined the site at the same time, and Website/ThatGuyWithTheGlasses, as a site, has gone on to build a larger female cast.
** Her hiring was, in fact, an attempt by Website/ThatGuyWithTheGlasses to apply The Smurfette Principle: there were no female reviewers on the site at the time, and the site advertised a contest specifically to find a DistaffCounterpart to WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic.

[[folder:Music]]
* Unlike other genres, it is still rare for a hip-hop label to have more than one female rapper at the same time, especially for solo acts. These women generally wind up falling into two roles: hyper-sexualized [[MsFanservice Ms. Fanservices]] (TropeCodifier Music/LilKim, Music/NickiMinaj, Trina, Shawnna, and Olivia for Bad Boy Entertainment, YMCMB, Slip-n-Slide, Disturbing tha Peace, and G-Unit, respectively) or projecting a less sexual OneOfTheBoys image (TropeCodifier MC Lyte, Lady of Rage, Yo-Yo and Da Brat for First Priority, Death Row, Lench Mob and So So Def, respectively). Post-Lil Kim, the former category has become more prominent, though, since the late 90s, more female emcees have found a happy medium between emphasizing their vocal prowess ''and'' sexual expression (former Flipmode artist Rah Digga and Eve, from Ruff Ryders). The one-girl-to-a-team rule has notably been averted by Murder Inc. (who featured Charli Baltimore, Lil' Mo and Vita), and Def Jam which, for a short period during the 2000s hosted Foxy Brown, Lady Sovereign, Unladylike, Shareefa, and Shawnna, simultaneously.
* In Music/TheProtomen's ''VideoGame/MegaMan'' RockOpera (also known as ''The Protomen''), Dr. Light's girlfriend Emily is the only female character to have lines.
* Rock bands are mostly all men, or have just one female member, who is usually the lead singer. Or the bass player.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* While the ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' fluff contains a good number of female characters, there are very few of those that can be used in-game.
** Also, although a number of armies (in particular the Imperial Guard and the Eldar/Dark Eldar) are said to contain large numbers of women, up until recently unless a unit was [[AmazonBrigade overwhelmingly female]] the models wouldn't reflect it. More recent miniatures have started to correct this pattern, with female torsos being available in the Eldar Guardian box sets for example.
** Space Marines cannot be female. This is handwaved, badly.
* The fantasy origin of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' is, if anything, worse. While it ''is'' set in a medieval society, the only women who show up in the setting are sex demons (literally), {{Lesbian Vampire}}s, [[TheFairFolk capricious forest spirits]], evil witch elves (who abduct young males so they can [[BloodBath bathe in their blood]] to become beautiful), and some nuns(?!) in a spin-off game.
** Brettonian Damsels are insulted. Yeah it doesn't help TOO much, but it's there. And then there's the female Ogre Maneater, but let's [[BrainBleach not think too hard about that.]]
* ''TabletopGame/{{Infinity}}'' seems to be going out of its way to avert this - most troop types have male and female miniatures available.
* In TabletopGame/{{AT 43}}, most armies appear to be equal-opportunity employers going by the background story, but there are basically no models of female regular troops. However, about half the special characters (who are all officers) ''are'' female, as are two out of the three released models of medics and one of the three scientist models.
** Justify with the Cogs being a OneGenderRace (and all clones)
* Played entirely straight with the 2014 co-op minis game {{Myth}} from MERCS Miniatures. The core heroes are four men and a woman. (They do offer a set of gender-swapped heroes for separate purchase, which lampshades the problem with its relentless pinkness.)
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Board Games]]
* TabletopGame/{{Chess}} has only one female character, the queen, which makes sense since the names are inspired by medieval warfare. However, [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen she is also the most powerful piece.]]
* The ''Guess Who?'' game (in the late 80’s) had exactly 5 girls and 19 guys. This was a game of yes/no questions about appearance. If you drew a card w/ a girl on it you were almost sure to lose that round. Women were truly an “unusual subtype”. They were rarer than bald people, people with glasses, and gingers.

[[folder:Card Games]]
* The TabletopGame/StarWarsCustomizableCardGame has exactly ''one'' female Imperial: Mara Jade. Female Rebels are half as rare: Leia and Mon Mothma. Female aliens are far more common, though.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fanfic]]
* UpToEleven in ''Fanfic/MyLittleUnicorn''. According to WordOfGod, the population of Unicornicopia consists mostly of males. While the story has at least four female winged unicorns in it, only Starla (who is mostly there as the LoveInterest) and Dementia have any form of slight significance to the overall plot.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* In ''VideoGame/OnePieceMansion'', Raspberry is described as being the only female in Syndicate 5.
* ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVIII'' has Jessica, the only female playable character in a group of 4. She may be the SquishyWizard but she has some of the more powerful weapon attacks. Though she does have some [[MsFanservice interesting]] costume changes. She's also the third character you get and the only one who can throw the big blaster spells. And there's also Princess Medea, but...
* The ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series has played with this trope throughout its entries:
** Of the six character classes in ''Final Fantasy I'', only the WhiteMage looks female (and the original White Wizard [[http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110109223549/finalfantasy/images/b/bc/White_Wizard_%28Final_Fantasy%29.png graphic]] confirms White mage as a male {{Bishonen}}). It's possible to see all of the characters as androgynous to be female and the remakes give most classes both male and female names.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'' only has two female playable characters out of ten, Maria and Leila, with the latter being one of the seven {{Guest Star Party Member}}s. The core group is TwoGuysAndAGirl.
** The original version of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII'' stars the all-male Onion Knights; the remake for the DS makes one of them a girl.
** Notably, every game since ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' has had exactly three female characters in the playable cast, regardless of the total cast size. This is explicitly referred to as the [[RuleOfThree Three Females Rule]] in Squaresoft fan circles. This even extends to entries that don't follow The Smurfette Principle, like ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'' (three women, two men) and '' VideoGame/FinalFantasyX-2'' (an all-female party of three). Note that later games have gravitated toward a total playable cast size of 6, thus equalizing the gender balance while still following the rule.
** This is obvious in the crossover ''Dissidia''. [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI Terra]] is the only female on the protagonist side in the main storyline, besides the goddess Cosmos herself, entirely because the roster is composed of only the main characters of each game, and ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' is the only one to have a female lead. Secret fighter [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI Shantotto]] does get a storyline all to herself. The side of evil is slightly fairer with [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII Ultimecia]] and [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII The Cloud of Darkness]] in their ranks, but the latter is questionable since "she" is technically female in physical form only and tends to [[GenderAndJapaneseLanguage talk like an old man]]. It has the same problem that most of the main villains in the series are male. The Dissidia Duodecim additions of [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Tifa Lockhart]], [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX Yuna]] (who was the original pick to represent her game before settling on Tidus), [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI Prishe]] and [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII Lightning]] alleviate this somewhat on the heroes' side, but the cast is still overwhelmingly male.
* In the first ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'', all of the Seraphim (Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel) were presumably male, but the second game reveals Gabriel is a girl, and all subsequent SMT and ''VideoGame/{{Persona}}'' games featuring Gabriel retain this.
* ''VideoGame/{{Wild ARMs 1}}'' and ''[[VideoGame/WildARMs3 3]]'' both follow this trope. Each of the two games has one playable female character (teamed up with two or three males), though Cecilia and Virginia are each portrayed as the one calling the shots.
** Heck, Virginia is considered [[TheHero The Main Character]] of Wild Arms 3.
** ''Wild [=ARMs=]: Alter Code F'', a remake of the first game, alleviated the gender issue by adding Calamity Jane and Ema to balance the cast (Zet, a guy, is also recruitable)
** ''VideoGame/WildArms2'' and ''VideoGame/WildArms4'' have an even spread of male to female, though both started with TwoGuysAndAGirl.
* Overall, the major ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' characters tend to lean in favor of males; only in ''Diamond'' and ''Pearl'' was a female Champion introduced, and it took until ''[[VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite Black]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite White]]'' to introduce a female Pokémon Professor. In spite of this, the Gym Leaders and the Elite Four are normally reasonably balanced and the player has been able to play as a boy or a girl since ''[[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Crystal]]'', with the developers having planned to implement female player characters since the beginning. ''[[VideoGame/PokemonRubyAndSapphire Ruby/Sapphire]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite Black/White]]'' also have female rivals.
* Most ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' games avert this; there are only two cases: while ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil'' has two major female characters, they are the sole female members of their respective STARS teams (Jill for Alpha team, Rebecca for Bravo team). Meanwhile, ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2'' subverts this; among the four major player characters, Leon's the only guy, joined by Claire, Ada, and Sherry.
** Weirdly, in early games, there are almost never any female zombies (the first game only had male zombies, while the second and third games had only one female zombie ''model'' among a slew of male models); this is averted by the time ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil0'' rolls around.
* Inverted in the original ''ValkyrieProfile'': Gandar is the only male recruitable sorcerer in the game (and the most powerful one to boot in terms of base stats), notwithstanding Lezard being usable in the BonusDungeon only available on [[HardModePerks Hard Mode]]. Also, Lenneth can fight two ways, both as a light swordswoman (along with swordswoman Jayle) or as an archer (making her the only female archer). There's also Aelia the lancer, but there are only two of them in that game anyway (along with the male Lawfer)
* In Scribblenauts Unlimited, Maxwell has many, many siblings you can unlock and play as. All but one of them are brothers, and the one sister is the distressed damsel.
* In the ''VideoGame/ApeEscape'' series, Pink Monkey is one of the Freaky Monkey Five.
* ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' was never character-heavy in its early games, but no female character was even ''seen'' until Amy Rose, who looked like a little pink Sonic in a dress. More characters have been introduced as the cast has expanded, but the majority have been male.
** At one point, Sega tried to produce a series with "Sonic's Sister", but the effort proved unsuccessful. Perhaps because they tried to [[DolledUpInstallment edit her into]] ''VideoGame/PopfulMail'' for localization of that game.
* In the first installment of the Nintendo MassiveMultiplayerCrossover, ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'', the only playable female was Samus Aran ([[SamusIsAGirl and her gender is pretty much hidden by her armor]]). In the next, out of 13 new characters, ''Super Smash Bros. Melee'' introduced three new females, one of whom teamed with a male character as the Ice Climbers. ''Super Smash Bros. Brawl'' didn't add any females to the cast, though it did make the gender of Samus and Sheik more visible.
** In general, [[{{Crossover}} crossover series]] featuring established characters tend to have a larger male ratio. 3 crossovers which come to mind that have larger amounts of females are ''Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo'', ''Pocket Fighter/Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix'', and ''VideoGame/CrossEdge''.
* On a related note, many other {{fighting game}}s fall victim to the same problem, but not because they're drawing from other canons. It is rare to find more than a few female characters available to play out of an otherwise large collection. Generally, the female characters are also [[FragileSpeedster notably weaker]] than the male characters. This is parodied in ''Webcomic/VGCats'' -- [[http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=130 here]].
** A pretty notable exception in ''VideoGame/MeltyBlood'', which has 14 unique characters (and a bunch of other [[RyuAndKen alternate forms for those characters]]). Of this large cast, there are ''four'' unique males, three of them are antagonists. This may be because ''Melty Blood'' is based off of a VisualNovel.
** Eventually averted by both of Namco's major fighting-game franchises, ''VideoGame/{{Tekken}}'' and ''[[VideoGame/SoulSeries SoulCalibur]],'' which gradually developed more gender-balanced casts as they progressed. Albeit mostly for fanservice purposes...
* The ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' games' only recurring female character was Princess Peach, who was usually a DamselInDistress. This changed as Princess Daisy and Birdo became full-fledged main characters and with the introductions of Toadette, a feminized Toad, and Rosalina, both of which were somewhat less stereotypical than Peach. The ratio still heavily favors males.
** And Birdo? Actually, fandom and the story bits from various games are conflicted over whether Birdo is a man, woman, or transsexual. In the games it was initially a male cross-dresser, but was retconned into being female.
** Also, some of the [=RPGs=] feature individual female characters from enemy species (e.g. Goombella the Goomba from ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'', Bow the Boo from ''VideoGame/PaperMario'', and Kylie Koopa from ''[[VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiPartnersInTime Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time]]'').
** The first two ''MarioParty'' games had Peach as the sole playable female character. This was changed in ''Mario Party 3'' when Daisy was added to the cast.
** On the villain side, the first evil female was the single girl of the Koopalings, Wendy O. Koopa. Captain Syrup showed up later as Wario's nemesis, and some stage bosses were female (Naval Piranha). Lately the villainous ladies have become more numerous with Cackletta, the Shadow Queen, Princess Shroob and Elder Princess Shroob, Mimi, the Shadow Sirens, and Robirdo.
* ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry'' has only a few female Kongs: Candy Kong was the first, a vaguely {{fanservice}}y monkey who helps the player. Dixie Kong was introduced as Diddy's girlfriend, simultaneously with the grandmotherly Wrinkly Kong, and Tiny Kong was the only female member of ''VideoGame/DonkeyKong64'''s FiveManBand.
** Similarly, the Kremlings were always male in the games, and it wasn't until ''Barrel Blast'' that females were finally featured (specifically, Kass and Kalypso).
** ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountryReturns'' has no [[AmbiguousGender apparent]] females at all.
* Many games with a four- or FiveManBand have exactly one female. [[TheChick Guess which role she usually fills]]. Examples:
** ''Billy Hatcher'': four main characters, one female.
*** Billy Hatcher also only had one female chicken elder. The rest were male. In fact, her being the only female elder is [[LampshadeHanging noted by an NPC]].
** ''VideoGame/CrazyTaxi'' has four playable drivers, one woman.
** Capcom's ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' arcade series (Tower of Doom, Shadow over Mystara) has the female elf as a GlassCannon and LadyOfWar, along with the male fighter, cleric, and dwarf. The latter game includes a FragileSpeedster female thief (and a male magic-user).
** ''[[VideoGame/FinalFight Final Fight 2]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/FinalFight 3]]'' has Maki and Lucia respectively. Both are {{Fragile Speedster}}s naturally, but Lucia is actually a bit stronger than Guy (the token speedster in that game).
** ''VideoGame/{{Gauntlet}}'' has three male (Warrior, Wizard, Elf), one female (Valkyrie). Sequel ''Gauntlet Legends'' averts this by changing the androgynous-looking elf to a female elven Archer. ''Dark Legacy'' falls back in when adding four more characters to the existing four: three male (Dwarf, Knight, Jester) and one female (Sorceress). As well, the breasts on all the women became about [[GagBoobs twice the size of their heads]]. ''Seven Sorrows'' then goes back to the original four characters.
*** ''VideoGame/GetMedieval'', a SpiritualSuccessor by Monolith Productions, kept a 2:2 ration by turning the Wizard into a naughty sorceress whose every line was a DoubleEntendre. (Okay, some were even single ones...)
** Both ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'' games have one female in a group of three males. In [[VideoGame/Left4Dead2 the sequel]], the two groups meet so it's two girls with six guys. All the [=NPCs=] in the game are male, including the zombies until the female version of the Boomer was introduced in the sequel.
* ''VideoGame/HeavyRain'': Four playable characters, one female--complete with [[spoiler: relationship conflicts with another main]] and sexualized role (which you can undermine later, but still).
* In the ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' games, while there are a small handful of important female [=NPCs=], when it comes to the playable characters, the three main characters are all male, and there's only one female GuestStarPartyMember in each game; Ariel of ''Disney/TheLittleMermaid'' in the first one, and Disney/{{Mulan}} in the sequel.
** This is partially due to the constraints of the setting. How many female Disney characters could believably be adapted to combat? Even Ariel was a big stretch...though given that this is a game who managed to make [[spoiler:Mickey Mouse]] a {{badass}}, it's not impossible.
** Well, let us not forget [[CastFullOfPrettyBoys Organization XIII]]. Out of thirteen members, there is only ''one'' female (maybe Xion, the new character introduced in ''[[OddlyNamedSequel 358/2 Days]]'', raises the number a little. But since she is nowhere to be seen in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'', she was probably killed off for real).
*** Xion's a confusing example, [[spoiler: She's a replica, which doesn't even make gender matter, but she also takes the view of the memories of who's viewing her, this makes her female (A memory of Kairi) to Roxas, but Xigbar sees her as male (Ventus).]]
** The main characters of ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'', Terra, Ven(tus), and Aqua fall victim to this. 2 males, one female. [[spoiler:Then it turns out that due to their fates and how the endgame plays out, Terra and Ven become {{decoy protagonist}}s to Aqua somewhat...]]
* Most ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'' games allow the player to choose between an equal number of male or female original characters. While this doesn't quite help the ratio among the licensed games, it makes for a more or less even mix among characters in the ''Original Generation'' series.
* The ''VideoGame/MegaMan'' series, as a whole, does this constantly. There is a grand total of two female characters in the entire original series - Roll, who took until ''10'' to get a single plot-significant action to her name (and is never playable except as a joke -- she's a [[{{Meido}} housekeeping robot]]), and ''VideoGame/MegaMan4's'' Kalinka, who exists entirely to be kidnapped. As for the villains, they had to be male because of the naming scheme -- every Robot Master is called <word> ''Man''. This has changed with the introduction of Splash Woman in ''9''...then ''10'' went back to the status quo.
** The CapcomVsWhatever games have their own different UnfortunateImplications concerning Roll. In ''VideoGame/MarvelVsCapcom2'', she was such an awful JokeCharacter that she got her own [[CharacterTiers tier]]. In ''VideoGame/TatsunokoVsCapcom'', thanks to the release of ''VideoGame/MegaManPoweredUp'', her moverset has a StayInTheKitchen theme.
** In [[WesternAnimation/MegaMan the Ruby-Spears cartoon]], Roll was more of a FauxActionGirl than a generic housekeeper. There was still the "vacuum-for-an-arm" complex she seemed to have developed, though...
** The ''[[VideoGame/MegaManX X]]'' series has only a couple, mostly in noncombat roles as well -- Iris was Zero's love interest and apparently not a combatant (though she did fight at the end -- against him, [[spoiler:and she dies by his sword]]), Alia plays mission control in later games, and a few of the bosses are feminine.
*** ''X8'' changes this slightly, as the three female operators are unlockable as bonus characters, each one emulating one of the main (male) characters to varying degrees of success. Alia isn't all that useful as she lacks X's ability to use different armor parts, but Layer is every bit as powerful (and badass) as Zero, and Palette lacks only Axl's ability to copy enemies (which is mostly used for the purpose of finding items rather than combat).
** The ''[[VideoGame/MegaManZero Zero]]'' series began to turn the tables. The series had Ciel (the most important non-player character), Leviathan (one of the four Guardians, a QuirkyMinibossSquad that evolved), Neige, and many of the bosses and Resistance [[NonPlayerCharacter NPCs]] are female.
** Finally, each of the ''[[VideoGame/MegaManZX ZX]]'' games has one male and one female protagonist -- a decision that [[SchrodingersPlayerCharacter has its own problems]], but at least lets girls save the ''Mega Man'' world for once.
** The ''[[VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork Battle Network]]'' series inherited the same problem as the original, since most of the Navis are based on original-series Robot Masters. However, there are ''lots'' of female human characters to make up for it.
*** Actually, one of the no-name [=NPCs=] you can talk to in the second game casually mentions "A cute girl like me wouldn't-", despite having a generic Navi NPC sprite ("commercial model", they're called in-game), albeit a red-hued version.
** The upcoming ''Rockman Online'' has four announced characters: X, Zero, Duo, and Cinnamon. Guess which one's the token chick.
* ''VideoGame/{{Starcraft}}'' had exactly one named female character: Sarah Kerrigan, who is [[LeftForDead betrayed]] but rapidly becomes the [[BigBad queen bitch of the universe]] as the Queen of the Zerg. The expansion set added the Protoss matriarch Raszagal (the only female Protoss for the next ten years). ''VideoGame/StarcraftII'' expands the universe a bit, including adding supporting female human characters, but with Raszagal dead, the role of "only female Protoss" is inherited by Executor Selendis, who will be the protagonist of the second expansion set.
** Starcraft: Ghost's main character was to be a female Ghost, not unlike Kerrigan. In its cinematic, she sits in the shadows of a Dropship on the way to the battle area. A macho Marine makes a sexist comment, and is silently stared down as she leans out of the shadows and is revealed to [[SamusIsAGirl be a woman]].
* Many early computer games would let the players choose their gender (as well as, often, other attributes like name, race and age) at the start of the game (unless you were a FeaturelessProtagonist, of course). As the amount of assets (graphics, voice acting, and sometimes even onscreen actors) needed to portray player characters increased, many studios discreetly dumped this feature. Modern games that let you choose a gender offer varying amounts of plot and gameplay branching as a result of the choice.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' allowed you to choose your character's gender, but of the four recruitable [=NPCs=] only one was female. In ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'' it got worse, with eight recruitable males, four dogs, a robot...and one female human, who was literally worse than useless (useless in a fight, can't gain levels, takes up a party slot and ''won't leave unless you kill her or sell her to slavers''. The being said, [[FemmeFatale some quests in the game were more easily completed if you were a woman]]. It is debatable whether this helps, but it certainly won't pass UsefulNotes/TheBechdelTest.
** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' is somewhat better in this regard, having two female recruitable [=NPCs=] who are relatively useful. However, they are still in the minority (there are three male companions, as well as a genderless (formerly male) super mutant, a male dog and a robot with a male voice).
** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' has two recruitable female characters of comparable use with a formerly female nightkin supermutant (which used to be a sweet old granny.) Four of the remaining five are males, among them a ghoul and a cybernetic mutt.
** The [[AllThereInTheManual Fallout Bible]] mentions Vault 68, populated with 999 men and only one woman, and Vault 69, with 999 women and only one man. It is never mentioned what happened in these vaults, but considering the [[CrapsackWorld tone of the games]] and the other vaults, they probably didn't end well.
* ''Franchise/MassEffect'' applies the trope quite strongly -- to ''entire species'', not individuals. You never see a female turian or batarian, although female turians are shown in the ''Mass Effect: Evolution'' comic. It's difficult to determine the gender of volus and hanar, but all the ones we've met have masculine voices and none have been suggested to be female. One female elcor can be heard, but not seen, in the Blasto 6 commercial. The asari are a mono-gendered species, but they all look and sound very much like human women. Creator/BioWare has said this was so they wouldn't have to design separate character models for each race.
** The lack of Female Turians is finally averted in the ''Omega DLC'' for the third game, features a female Turian biotic named Nyreen. The multiplayer mode now has female turians as well.
** It should also be mentioned that the playable cast completely averts this. ''VideoGame/MassEffect'' has three women (if you count Liara, from the mono-gendered asari race) and three men. ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' has five men and four women, [[spoiler: and it probably would have been five and five, except the last playable character is a geth]], and there's one female and one male in DLC. ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' can change drastically based on who survived Virmire and the Collector Base, but there are two mandatory female party members, and only one mandatory male. If Ashley survives Virmire, it's possible to have the women doubly outstrip the men - EDI, Liara, Ashley and Tali compared to Garrus and James. (It should be noted that EDI is an AI, but she's very distinctively female). And of course, Sheperd herself/himself can also tip the balance.
* ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpires'' later added in female villagers to the series (villagers may be either gender) in response to a lack of females in the first game. {{Justified|Trope}} otherwise since virtually all other units were combatants, and everyone knows that very few past cultures allowed women to fight.
** The original version of spinoff ''VideoGame/AgeOfMythology'' does this with the playable deities. There are eight male gods [[note]][[GreekMythology Zeus, Hades, Poseidon,]] [[EgyptianMythology Ra, Set,]] [[NorseMythology Odin, Thor and Loki]][[/note]] and only one goddess ([[EgyptianMythology Isis]]). The ''Titans'' expansion adds another, [[GreekMythology Gaia]].
* Rather smurfy is the ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}}'' series, especially ''Warcraft III'': Out of ''twelve'' heroes, only one, the Priestess of the Moon, is female, and the consensus is that she is [[CharacterTiers the worst]] of them all. You mean they couldn't ''at least'' squeeze a Jaina Proudmoore lookalike in there, given that she's already a custom model representing the hero type? At least there are actually female units, so that ''could'' be a step in the right direction.
** Looking at the races themselves, only the Night Elves have a significant amount of female units. The humans have the sorceress, orcs have nothing at all and the undeads have the banshees. And there are no female neutrals either, unless you count the High Elven archers. Oh, and in the game, the Priestess's icon is a portrait of her ''tiger'', not the Priestess herself, unlike all the other male heroes who have portraits of their faces.
** A few bones are thrown to the gender-equality crowd in the expansion ''The Frozen Throne''. Three female heroes -- the Warden, the Dark Ranger, and the Naga Sorceress -- were added, and were at least decent.
** The earlier games in the series had ''no'' female characters in the game. At all. Until ''Beyond The Dark Portal'', and then you got only one: Alleria Windrunner, a unique unit and Sylvanas's elder sister.
*** ''Warcraft 1'' had a half-orc, half-human (who was later retconned into half-Dranei) girl. Garona Halforcen was present in one mission of ''Warcraft 1''. The Smurfette Principle in full force.
** The Orc gender balance was also acknowledged in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' in that the orcs actually ''were'' sexist. Despite being every bit as aggressive and strong as the men, women were denied combat roles. Thrall changed that between ''[=WC3=]'' and ''[=WoW=]''.
** And that is before getting into their [[http://www.wowpedia.org/images/thumb/7/7e/Sylvanasstatuee.jpg/180px-Sylvanasstatuee.jpg outfits.]]
* Contrast ''VideoGame/EverQuest'', where female characters seem to outnumber male ones. Both ''Everquest'' and ''Everquest 2'''s main characters, Firiona Vie and Antonia Bayle respectively, were female. Firiona's nemesis, Lanys Ty'Val, was female as well.
* The ''VideoGame/StarFox'' games follow the principle. [[VideoGame/StarFox1 The original game]], and its remake, ''VideoGame/StarFox64'', featured an all male membership in the title team (bad jokes about Slippy's AmbiguousGender notwithstanding) and only one female character period--sometime ally Katt, who assisted you in Zoness and Sector Z. It wasn't until ''VideoGame/StarFoxAssault'' that the team gained a permanent female member: Krystal from ''VideoGame/StarFoxAdventures''.
** The [[VaporWare unreleased]] ''Star Fox 2'', however, would have added two female characters to the roster - GenkiGirl Fay and ActionGirl Miyu.
** And in ''Command'', there are a solid 4 females: Krystal, Kat, and newcomers Lucy (Peppy's daughter) and [[TheScrappy Amanda]], Slippy's ''female'' love interest. There is even an all-girl mission.
** Then we have the 1993 Magazine/NintendoPower comics with [[BadassDamsel Fara Phoenix]], Fox [=McCloud=]'s future {{Love Interest|s}}.
* All three entries of the ''[[VideoGame/EarthBound Mother]]'' series has had three guys and one girl in the main party (or in ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}'''s case, two guys, a girl and a dog), the girl being the psychic powerhouse.
* Four main playable characters in ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'', and you can count how many of them are female on the single hand of a blind butcher.
* ''VideoGame/SengokuBasara'' spinoff fighting only had Oichi as the only "true" playable female character of the sausage fighting fest. The rest of the girls are delegated to backup.
* The first iteration of ''VideoGame/StreetFighterII'' had only one female warrior out of twelve fighters, Chun-Li. This gradually changed through the course of the series with the introduction of Cammy in ''Super Street Fighter II''; Rose, Sakura, R. Mika, Karin, Juni and Juli in the ''VideoGame/StreetFighterAlpha'' series; Ibuki, Elena, and Makoto in the ''VideoGame/StreetFighterIII'' series; and Crimson Viper and Juri in the ''VideoGame/StreetFighterIV'' series.
** One of Chun-Li's win quotes in ''VideoGame/TatsunokoVsCapcom'' (which has a roughly even male/female mix) makes fun of this: "I remember when I was the only girl on the roster."
** The cast of crossover characters from ''VideoGame/FinalFight'' initially featured four characters, all male, but this changed with the addition of Maki (from ''Final Fight 2'') in the portable versions of ''Alpha 3''.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFight Revenge'' features an all-male cast, excluding ([[ShesAManInJapan or including]]) Poison. As made fun in one fansite, "Ohh, and there's only one girl...Ohh wait, Poison is a transsexual. Yep, there's no girls in this fighting game."
*** The western release of the Super NES port of ''Final Fight'', [[WouldntHitAGirl replaced Roxy and Poison with two (non-crossdressing) dudes named Sid and Billy]], making Jessica (an NPC) into the only girl in Metro City.
* The ''VideoGame/FatalFury'' series introduced its first female fighter with the ninja girl Mai Shiranui in ''Fatal Fury 2''. Blue Mary was introduced in ''Fatal Fury 3'' to balance things out, followed by Li Xiangfei in ''Real Bout 2'' and Tsugumi Sendo in ''Wild Ambition''. ''Mark of the Wolves'' only had two female fighters (B. Jenet and Hotaru) out of a roster of 14 characters.
* The ''VideoGame/ArtOfFighting'' trilogy has a total of only five female fighters in the entire series. In the first installment, King, the sole female fighter in that game, [[{{Bifauxnen}} is disguised as a male bouncer]] [[ClothingDamage until her shirt is torn in battle]]. [[FanService Wonder why her gender was revealed that way?]]
* Despite being the flagship ActionGirl of the video game world, Samus Aran of ''VideoGame/{{Metroid}}'' fame managed to become the Smurfette in ''her own series'' in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime: Hunters.'' Six new bounty hunters were introduced, all of them male or [[PronounTrouble ambiguously so]]. She's also the only Hunter without a unique weapon, unless you count the fact that her missiles home--but this may be due to the tendency of game heroes [[JackOfAllStats not to specialize]] than any smurfiness. ''Metroid Prime 3: Corruption'' was more fair, as one of the three new hunters was another woman.
** If we've learned anything from the series, it's [[SamusIsAGirl don't assume the guy in the all-encompassing armor...is.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'' managed to avert this issue pretty well by both Chell and [=GLADoS=] being female.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Bully}}'', each social clique has only a single female member versus about half a dozen male members.
* While ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' has a diverse cast of genders in most games, some of them have this problem with the villains. General Petrine of Daien is the only woman among the Four Riders, and the only other female villain in the game is Ena, [[spoiler:who pulls a HeelFaceTurn after the heroes [[DefeatMeansFriendship defeat her at the capital]]]]. ''Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones'' had only Selena on the villains roster [[spoiler:and even then Selena remains loyal to her homeland, not being one of the 3 truly evil generals]]. ''Fire Emblem'' (aka ''Rekka no Ken'') was a little more balanced, though it still had more male villains than females and two of the "females" (along with one of the "males") are explicitly genderless.
* At one time to some people, ''VideoGame/SpyroTheDragon'' was classified as a ''sexist'' game because there were no important female characters at first. But then along came Bianca and Elora, with the first being a sort of villain and the other just a love interest. And then there was [[EnsembleDarkhorse Sheila]], a female kangaroo. Even in the ''Legend of Spyro'' series, Cynder is the only important female, with no other females present, which leads to this trope heading for some very UnfortunateImplications, although false allegations of Cynder being a MarySue are overpowering what bizarre ideas could be drawn from a universe of mostly male dragons.
* Both ''VideoGame/StarWarsBattlefront I'' and II feature at least four factions and have as much as three female characters, the generic Rebel Sniper class (which is excluded in a few maps), Princess Leia, and Aayla Secura, the latter two both hero class characters limited to appear in as much as four maps (if you count Hero Assault).
** If you own the Xbox version there is Asajj Ventress hero character from the DLC.
* ''VideoGame/Wolfenstein3D'' has one single female in both series, who is a boss that looks almost exactly like her brother and has a low voice.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}} I'', only one of the three (the Rogue) classes was female. ''Diablo II'' evened the gender balance a bit with three female classes and four male ones. ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'' removes the problem entirely by allowing the player to be either gender for all classes.
** ''Diablo I'' was either more or less balanced with the inclusion of the Hellfire expansion depending on how you approach it. It added the male monk class by default, plus mildly altered remakes of the Warrior and Rogue that could only be unlocked by futzing with a system file.
* ''VideoGame/{{Torchlight}}'' has the same gender ratio as ''Diablo I'' (not surprising, considering the similarity between the two games and many of the same developers). Also like ''Diablo'', the lone female happens to be the physical ranged damage dealer.
* Every ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}: VideoGame/DawnOfWar'' game has one female character (the Eldar Farseer) and one female unit (the Howling Banshees, also Eldar), with ''Dark Crusade'' adding the [[DanceBattler Harlequin]] and ''Soulstorm'' introducing another female unit and the [[AmazonBrigade Sisters of Battle]]. This is justified for the explicitly all-male Space Marines and the genderless aliens, though for the other factions...not so much.
** Somewhat misleading also, as female Farseers in lore are actually a minority, and howling banshees are 50% male (though they still wear female armor and refer to themselves as the daughters of...some elder crone chick from their mythology. Reverse is true for the other aspect warriors, it's just not obvious.)
* ''NezumiMan'' has Wave Nezumi, the only female boss of the eight. Kind of a coincidence then that her powers are the same element as Splash Woman's.
* ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' both plays this straight and subverts it. The main cast of NPC heroes, the Freedom Phalanx, has only two females, Numina and [[HeroesWantRedHeads Sister Psyche]], who ended up marrying one of the others, Manticore. The game's ''ComicBook/TeenTitans'' {{Expy}}, the Vindicators, is all female ''except'' two.
** The villain groups in [[CityOfAdventure Paragon City]] are almost all male, with two exceptions (there seems to be a pattern here...), the [[CircusOfFear Carnival of Shadows]] and the Knives of Artemis.
* The only females in the entirety of ''VideoGame/{{Half-Life|1}}'' are the black-clad assassins who never speak and only appear in two areas. However, ''VideoGame/{{Half-Life 2}}'' has an equal distribution of genders amongst the random civilians and LaResistance members as well as the inclusion of Alyx, who with ''Episode One'' and ''Episode Two'' has been elevated to Main Character status alongside Gordon.
* The playable characters in both ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'' and its sequel consist of three men and one woman - neither is TheChick, however, and they are both distinctly different from each other. This is explained as [[spoiler: the gene to be resistant to TheVirus is recessive and carried on the x-chromosome. Women need two copies of the gene, while men only need one, explaining the genetically sound 3:1 ratio.]]
* Let's see, Franchise/MortalKombat... For [[VideoGame/MortalKombat the first game]], the creators realized they didn't have any female fighters in their roster, so they changed the character of male Kurtis Stryker into female Sonya Blade (Stryker would become a fighter after all in the third game). This made her the only female out of 7 playable characters and 10 fighters overall. Later games have made sure to include female playable characters from the start, with the ratio male:female about 5:1. As for the various factions and species, most of the time there are more (known) male characters than females, the exceptions being the saurians (1:1 or 1:2), the demons (2:5), and the vampires (0:1 or 1:1). Interestingly in case of the vampires, initially there were supposed to be a female and male vampire introduced in ''[[VideoGame/MortalKombatDeadlyAlliance Deadly Alliance]]'', but the male was dropped because of time constraints.
* ''VideoGame/{{Drakengard}}'': Aside from professionally DamselInDistress Furiae, the only female character of note is Arioch. Who is a deranged, barren elf who [[EatsBabies eats children]]. She isn't even the worst person in the party, which includes a sociopathic mass murderer who routinely kicks his own allies in the head, a senile, racist old man, a pedophile, and a six-year-old boy [[spoiler:who dooms the world out of petty spite]].
* Several of the ''Franchise/{{Ultima}}'' games have a less-than-favorable ratio. While the eight "Companions of the Avatar" had a 4:4 ratio, the females generally had worse stats. (By design in Katrina's case, as Shepherds by design aren't supposed to excel.) The trio of Iolo, Dupre and Shamino (all male) also kept gaining prominence over other characters as the game went on. The [[VideoGame/UltimaVIII eighth]] and [[VideoGame/UltimaIX ninth]] games even disallowed playing as a female main character!
* The ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' series fits this trope well. In the first game, Sniper Wolf is the only female foxhound member. In the 2nd game, Fortune is the only female Dead Cell member. In the 3rd game, The Boss is the only female Cobra unit. In [=MGS4=], Meryl is the only female member in Rat Patrol 01. Finally, in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidPeaceWalker'', Paz, Amanda and doctor Strangelove are the only female members in the MSF in terms of storyline, although you can recruit more female soldiers into your unit to even the balance.
* Rachel Parker in the ''VideoGame/{{Resistance}}'' series is the only female recurring survivor.
** Somewhat subverted with ''Resistance: Retribution'' where the major issue is fighting an army of Female Chimera along with the typical Chimera mooks.
* Chizuru, Shermie, and Shion are the only female boss characters you will face in ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters'' series, in 96/2003, 97, and Xi respectively.
* The ''AceCombat'' series is a pretty bad offender (but then again, they are gaming equivalents of ''Film/TopGun''):
** ''VideoGame/AceCombat2'' had a single significant female character, namely the optional wingwoman Kei Nagase. The other potential wingman was a ScaryBlackMan and the PlayerCharacter FeaturelessProtagonist is referred to as male.
** The un-{{macekre}}d Japanese version of ''VideoGame/AceCombat3Electrosphere'' is, thus far, the biggest aversion of this trope in the series. In addition to the {{Ill|Girl}} MacGuffinGirl Rena Hirose, it gave us the [[TheGloriousWarOfSisterlyRivalry Fitzgerald sisters, Cynthia and Fiona,]] who pretty much determine the late-game missions in the Neucom path. With Erich Jager, Keith Bryan, and [[EvilMentor Abyssal Dision]] on the male side, ''Electrosphere'' comes as close to gender parity, as an ''AC'' game can.
** ''AceCombat04ShatteredSkies'' gave us Yellow 4, the [[CartwrightCurse Doomed Love Interest]] of the hero's rival, and the only female in her squadron.
** ''AceCombat5TheUnsungWar'' featured the ''other'' Kei Nagase, the only female in the entire game until the brief late-mission appearance of Bartlett's old flame.
** ''AceCombatZeroTheBelkanWar'' goes for a Token Enemy Female again and gives us Marcela Vasquez, the only female boss-level ace and the only woman to get her own interview. Also, out of 169 [[NominalImportance named aces]] in the game, only 9 are female. That's about 19 to 1 male-to-female ratio.
** ''AceCombat6FiresOfLiberation'' tried to address this issue by showing a part of the story through the eyes of Melissa and Ludmila, two female refugees wandering the war-torn Emmeria, looking for their daughter and fiance, respectively. Also, it had a Token Enemy Female, Irena Dvornik, as well as allied pilot Lanner.
** ''AceCombatAssaultHorizon'' follows the suit with only one female character of NominalImportance and speaking role, Janice Rehl. A Nagase lookalike is present in some cutscenes but that's sadly just a non-speaking cameo.
*** On a more meta level, Janice is so far the ''only'' playable female character in a twenty years-old series. And only for half a mission.
* Noble Team in ''VideoGame/HaloReach'' has only one female Spartan, unless you make Noble Six female.
* The only female in ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare'' is your fellow Cobra pilot "Deadly" in the first game. Obviously justified by the fact that it's a military game.
* Anya Stroud is the only female who fought alongside Marcus in Delta Squad in ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar 3''.
* Depending on the game, [[Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda Zelda]] may be the only important female character in the series. However, it ''is'' named after her.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Rage}}'', Elizabeth is the only known female Resistance member.
* Of the gang of playable characters in ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'', three are male, with a fourth man driving the truck, and one is female - introduced as "The Siren," which is barely a gnat's whisker away from simply calling her "the token girl." The vast majority of enemies are male, too. Or arguably, in the case of the skags, not sexually dimorphic.
** Borderlands 2 continues the trend, three male characters and 'the siren'. Both games include a VoiceWithAnInternetConnection named Angel who guides you through the game, as well as [[MsFanservice Mad Moxxi]]. The second includes Ellie, a mission-giver, [[spoiler:and has all four of the original characters]], and another female character class available as a [[PreOrderBonus preorder]] bonus or {{D|ownloadableContent}}LC, the Mechromancer.
* In ''VideoGame/LiveALive'', most of the characters you control are male, except two: Prehistoric Chapter's Bel, who won't be coming for the Final Chapter, or Kung-Fu Chapter's Li Kuugo, who'll only appear in the Final Chapter if picked as the star pupil (otherwise she got KilledOffForReal).
* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert'' has two female characters -- but since they are split by side, one of them isn't really part of the ensemble for the other side's campaign (especially on the Allied side -- Tanya ''does'' make a few appearances in the Soviet campaign).
* There are around two or three females in Visual Novel ''VisualNovel/{{Morenatsu}}'', none of which have in-game sprites.
* One of the 4 Horsemen in the ''VideoGame/{{Darksiders}}'' series named Fury is the only female horsemen and she has yet to make her debut in the game, only in the comics. Uriel and Lilith are also the only known female characters on the heaven and hell side respectively.
* VideoGame/TeamFortress2: The only obvious female in the game is "The Administrator", aka the angry voice that screams at you during rounds. Admittedly, the Pyro ''may'' be female (or genderless, for all we know), and the comics also have the character Ms. Pauling, but if you look just at the game, it follows this trope.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Megamind}}'' has a single Brainbot with a pink frill and lipstick. The DVD commentary states that she was an InvokedTrope, and considered "the Smurfette of the Brainbots". There is also Roxanne Ritchie.
* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' suffered this trope in its first season, where the only female character of any importance was Katara, while the other heroes, villains, and vast majority of minor characters were male. This was fixed in the second season, with the [[AffirmativeActionGirl introduction of more female characters]], including another girl joining the core group, making an even ratio of two males to two females...not counting the (male) {{team pet}}s, Momo and Appa. Early production notes for the series indicate that they just barely dodged this trope - Toph, Azula, and pretty much everyone besides Katara was male in the original draft. Remember that large male earthbender in the opening who never appeared in the show? That was supposed to be Toph.
** They later made an effort to keep it that way because after [[spoiler:Zuko completed his HeelFaceTurn and joined the Gaang]]; just ''three episodes later'' [[spoiler:Suki joined them too.]]
*** On a smaller scale, [[CuteBruiser Toph Beifong]] appears to be the only female competitor in the Earth Rumble VI. Of course, that was a sendup of ProfessionalWrestling, with all the overblown testosterone that implies, so it could probably be excused.
*** In the spinoff series ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra''. Even if most of the cast is male, the lead is female, something that is pretty rare for an action-oriented children's series aimed at a general audience. Other female characters in ''Korra'' are Tenzin's two daughters Jinora and Ikki, his non-bender wife Pema, BadassNormal Asami, DaChief of Republic City Police, [[spoiler:who is Toph's daughter, and at least one appearance of old!Katara]]. Even Korra's polar bear-dog Naga is a female.
* Examples from Creator/{{Hanna-Barbera}}:
** All of H-B's FunnyAnimal characters were male until Cindy Bear was introduced.
** Penelope Pitstop was the only woman not only in ''WesternAnimation/WackyRaces'', but also in [[WesternAnimation/ThePerilsOfPenelopePitstop her own series]].
** The animated series of ''TheLittleRascals'' consisted of four boys and Darla Hood, although this is probably a legacy from the original shorts, where the boys were firmly in their "GirlsHaveCooties" stage.
** For the first season of ''WesternAnimation/ShirtTales'', Pammy Panda was the only female in the group. When the show began its second season, a female kangaroo was added to the cast.
** ''WesternAnimation/JonnyQuest''
*** In the original series, Jezebel Jade was the only female character to appear in at least two episodes. Several episodes had all-male casts.
*** The 1980s version introduced Jessie Bradshaw to the all-male cast of the original series. She was meant to be a recurring character, but only appeared in the last episode before the series' cancellation. She would return in the two follow-up made-for-TV animated movies, which {{retcon}}ned/[[TheReveal revealed her]] to be Race Bannon's daughter. In the 1990s update, she was made a main character.
**** Unfortunately, it also reinforced the stereotypes about women as motherly and men as inept parents when it turned Dr. Quest from a loving, nurturing father into an odiously stereotypical "clueless male" dad who could not possibly be nurturing specifically because he was not a female.
* In most series in the ''WesternAnimation/{{Superfriends}}'' franchise, Franchise/WonderWoman was the only female hero. This was particularly egregious during the ''Challenge of the Super Friends'' season, when the ranks of the Super Friends swelled to 11 and she was ''still'' the only female.[[note]]Even the Legion of Doom had 2 female members -- twice as many as were in the Super Friends.[[/note]] The creators of ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' tried to rectify this by adding Hawkgirl rather than Hawkman in the opening season. When ''Justice League Unlimited'' rolled around, the writers made sure the new, obscure characters included were both male and female.
** The ''Superfriends'' in Season 1 attempted to mitigate this a little by adding Wendy. But she was the Smurfette of her heroes-in-training subgroup. Marvin and Wonder Dog, so named as an honorific to Wonder Woman, are both male. It's notable, however, that Wendy was usually the more competent detective of the trio, being very much the Velma to Marvin & Wonderdog's Shaggy & Scooby.
** In the subsequent seasons, Jayna of the WonderTwins was added, but she was still the Smurfette of her own subgroup, as co-Wonder Twin Zan and Team Pet Gleek were also both male.
* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' tried repeatedly to add female characters to the cast, with little success, for reasons noted above.
** That's not to say that there were no female characters originally. Tweety's owner is always referred to as Granny. In fact, she had a classic WB cartoon named for her, "Tugboat Granny". So, she is a named character and is an important part of the Warners mythos. Most notably, in modern adaptations, she's the caretaker of the WesternAnimation/BabyLooneyTunes.
** Poor Penelope Pussycat. No one ever remembers her name... That's because she didn't have a name in the original WesternAnimation/PepeLePew cartoons -- or rather, she did, but it changed every cartoon. She was "Fabrette" on "Really Scent," Fifi in "Two Scents Worth," and other times, she was just a nameless cat who got painted and is left to be chased and harassed by this horny skunk.
*** The only time she was named Penelope during {{the Golden Age of|Animation}} ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' was in 1954's "The Cat's Bah" (which is where they got the name of Penelope for her when she was brought back in "Carrotblanca.")
** Don't forget Witch Hazel!
** Petunia Pig is Porky's girlfriend, but she had a ''much'' more prominent role in the ''Looney Tunes'' comic books and merchandise than she ever did on screen, having only ever appeared in a handful of animated shorts.
** Then there's Mama Bear in Creator/ChuckJones' "Three Bears" series (there pretty much had to be.) She's passive and deadpan (compared to her violent husband and idiot son), but that's what makes her hilarious.
** More success was found with its successor shows, ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures'', ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}'', and ''WesternAnimation/{{Histeria}}'': The first has Babs Bunny, who was Buster's equal in every way, as well as Shirley The Loon, Fifi [=LaFume=], Mary Melody, Elmyra Duff, Rhubella Rat, and so on. The second had Dot Warner (who was, of course, the only female Warner sibling, but she went to some effort to make sure she was not forgotten by adding "...and the Warner sister, Dot!" whenever an opportunity came up), Rita, Marita, Minerva Mink, and Slappy Squirrel. (Interestingly enough, the Warner Brothers were originally supposed to be a trio of ''brothers'' (Smakky, Wakky, and Yakky), with a mischievous little brother character instead of Dot, who was only supposed to be a minor recurring character of "the Warner Cousin". A woman on the production team finally asked that the characters be two male and one female and Wakky and Smakky were merged into Wakko.) And the third had Miss Information, Charity Bazaar, Aka Pella, Pepper Mills, Cho-Cho, Susanna Susquahanna, Lydia Karaoke, and the World's Oldest Woman in their regular cast.
*** A first season episode of ''Tiny Toons'', "Fields of Honey", actually revolved around Babs trying to find a female Looney Toon who could serve as her mentor. It turned out to be a black-and-white era character, Honey, whose comic schtick was not unlike hers; she had simply been forgotten. But note that in RealLife, Honey existed -- and she was merely [[SatelliteLoveInterest Bosko's girlfriend]] and was ''nothing'' like the one portrayed here.
** Still around, though not really successful: Lola Bunny, introduced in ''Film/SpaceJam''. Most classic ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' fans have a lot of not-so-nice things to say about her, mostly because her addition into the otherwise all-male Looney Tunes roster feels so forced. ''WesternAnimation/TheLooneyTunesShow'' [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap has improved this]].
*** Her predecessor, Honey Bunny (no relation to Bosko's girlfriend Honey), was a staple of the old Gold Key and Whitman Looney Toons comic books for years and years. Sadly, Honey seems to have been largely forgotten since Lola was introduced.
* Most of the older Creator/{{Disney}} cartoon canon are male, and the females are often just [[DistaffCounterpart stereotypical female versions]] of existing male characters, such as MinnieMouse and Daisy Duck. Minnie's TheChick alright, but Daisy is pretty cool for her time, kinda {{Tsundere}}-like.
** In the 1980s, Disney briefly tried to revive the classic Disney characters through such madness as [[WeAreStillRelevantDammit making Donald a skateboarder and Goofy a fighter pilot a la]] ''Film/TopGun''. However, there was a considerable upshot to this: Minnie Mouse became a far more interesting character than she'd ever been after fifty years of being "Mickey's girlfriend". As a matter of fact, she mimicked the young Madonna (in a kid-friendly way, of course). She had her own "Totally Minnie" album, her own television special, and...very quickly and sadly devolved back into TheChick once this was all scrapped and Disney fired up the cutesy-poo "Minnie and Me" merchandise line, where she once again donned her polka-dot dress and giggled over Mickey. ''Sigh...''
** Minnie got revamped again for the ''WesternAnimation/HouseOfMouse'' series, and while Mickey was still the "boss", as the club's owner and emcee, more often than not Minnie was the one giving ''him'' orders, being the show producer and club accountant, and very competent at the job. Sadly, again, this didn't last, and once the next series came around, she was ''again'' TheChick. ''WesternAnimation/HouseOfMouse'' also resurrected Clarabelle Cow as a recurring character, and commonly featured female musical guests, though the ratio was still heavily in favor of the guys.
** MinnieMouse finally has her own show, ''MinniesBowToons''. Her friends, Daisy Duck and Clarabelle Cow and her nieces Millie and Melody Mouse show up, as do quite a few other female characters though this has somewhat moved her into the GirlShowGhetto as a result.
* In ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'', you can count the female Transformers who appeared more than once in a series on both hands. [[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/List_of_female_Transformers A list of all female Transformers can be found here]].
** This isn't helped by long-time ''Transformers'' comic writer Simon Furman, who writes Transformers as having ''no'' gender and has publically stated that he hates the idea of female Transformers. This, combined with the fact that Jhiaxus' experiments in giving Transformers gender made Arcee both a female and AxCrazy brings up some UnfortunateImplications.
** Admittedly, it is a show about alien robots who technically wouldn't have genders. This is however not a good excuse for cutting out the characters designed to look female, or cancelling their toys. Also, Furman seems to think "no gender" means male by default. Literally, it would mean that there's no reason Optimus Prime can't be female!
** On a smaller scale, ''[[WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated Animated]]'' Starscream's female clone (named Slipstream, according to WordOfGod) is the only female in a flock of five.
** The [[AllThereInTheManual Allspark Almanacs]] have added a few more girls, but they also include the Omega Sentinel roster - out of twelve "Greek-letter-Supremes", only one confirmed female, and she was assigned to a rearguard action for most of her lifespan.
** The [[Franchise/TransformersAlignedUniverse Aligned Continuity]] explicitly states that one thirteenth of all Cybertronians are female. This is because they are descended from Solus Prime, the only female among the original Thirteen Primes.
** While the original cast of ''WesternAnimation/BeastWars'' was entirely male, female characters Blackarachnia and Airazor were introduced in the first season. However with Airazor [[spoiler:getting beamed into space by some freaky alien plants midway through the second season]], Blackarachnia remains the only female in half of the second and the entire third season. Interestingly enough, Airazor does return as Tigerhawk, a fusion of both hers and Tigatron's bodies, but the character is presented as male.
* Despite the fact that market research indicated that the female characters were among the most popular characters in ''Franchise/GIJoe'', a project to add a black woman to the team was dropped when Hasbro decided that [[http://www.yojoe.com/archive/unproduced/prototype10.shtml "female action figures would be poor business"]]. In the end, the character ''didn't even get a name''.
** However, the ''GI Joe Reloaded'' comic series did have a black woman -- which they achieved by taking one of the few black characters, Doc, and [[GenderFlip making him into a her]], bringing the total of the female characters in the series to four. Nice [[TwoferTokenMinority conservation of minority slots]], Devil's Due.
** Devil's Due's ''G.I. Joe: Declassified'' series also (sort of) added a black female member to the Joe team. One of the early Marvel G.I. Joe comics showed someone looking at a list of team members on a computer, including the never-seen "Shooter" (an in joke based on the name of Marvel's then editor-in-chief, Jim Shooter). Over 20 years later, the ''Declassified'' series {{re|tcon}}vealed that Shooter was actually a black woman, who was the original G.I. Joe team's sniper. Her presence on the team was so top secret that even the other Joes didn't know about her...and consequently didn't realize they were leaving her behind as they fled an about-to-explode Cobra base at the end of their first mission. (She got shot moments before the base exploded, so the Joes weren't directly responsible for her death.)
* The only female in ''Franchise/WinnieThePooh'' is Kanga, a mother, who isn't seen nearly as much as her own son. [[EnforcedTrope Although this makes perfect sense, given the fact that it's based on a little boy's stuffed animal collection.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1987'' has the character of April O'Neil, their female friend who sometimes helps out the four superheroes but generally just gets [[DamselInDistress kidnapped]]. [[Series/NinjaTurtlesTheNextMutation Later, there was an attempt to add a female turtle named Venus to the franchise]], but [[TheScrappy she wasn't received well]] and [[FanonDiscontinuity has been soundly ignored ever since]]. [[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003 The 2003 series]] gives April a much more [[ActionGirl action-oriented role]] (as well as that of CoolBigSis to the Turtles) as the series progressed, with her wisely taking lessons from Splinter; and [[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012 the 2012 series]] integrated her even more by making her about the turtles' age in addition to Splinter giving her kunoichi training.
** In the original ''Comicbook/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesAdventures'' published by Archie and loosely inspired by the old cartoon, April was far less damsel-y, even to start, and eventually received lessons from Splinter as well. In later issues she was more than once depicted as competent fighter. Another major female character, Ninjara, is also worth a mention as an exception to this trope.
** April's ActionGirl role was fully realized in [[Film/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles the CG movie.]] While not nearly as in the spotlight as the turtles, she was now considered a fully trained ninja, fighting alongside the turtles and Casey Jones with a katana.
** In addition the character of Karai was given a significant role in this movie and the 2003 series, adding another female warrior to the cast.
** The ''Fast Forward'' series also features only one girl, Starlee.
* The [[TheFilmOfTheBook animated film]] of ''Literature/WatershipDown'' cut three bucks from the starting main cast and included a doe named Violet. Nonetheless, the only purpose of her existence is to show that [[StuffedIntoTheFridge things are, indeed, serious]] by being caught by a hawk. The television series "addresses" the gender imbalance by making the clever one, Blackberry, a doe.
** In the original book, the gender issue was dealt with as just the way rabbits ''think''. They're not human. They can't wrap their minds around a board that floats on the water. They pass countless dangers and finally locate the perfect new home, settle down to start a colony, and realize, "Oh, damn, we forget to bring any women." Which is the impetus for the second half of the story ("Shoot, we better find someone to bear our kits").
** It's also worth noting that in the sequel, ''Tales from Watership Down'', some females do get larger roles. A story about a doe-led warren is told, and the doe Hyzenthlay [[spoiler:becomes co-leader of the ''Watership Down'' rabbits]]. This was author Richard Adams' specific response to complaints that the first book was too testosterone-centric.
* For all their [[EmotionalTorque perfection]], one major complaint about Creator/{{Pixar}} is the lack of films that have passed the [[UsefulNotes/TheBechdelTest test]]:
** ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory'''s main cast includes a young boy's toy collection, with predictably male-oriented rather than girls' toys. Bo Peep was the only female in the cast, a domestic woman and SatelliteLoveInterest with no part in the main action. ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory2'' and ''[[WesternAnimation/ToyStory3 3]]'' even out the gender inequality, though not by much. Even though Toy Story 3 had many more female characters than the other two, it should be worth mentioning that [[spoiler:Andy got rid of Bo Peep]].
** ''WesternAnimation/ABugsLife'', despite having a few female royalties, is guilty of the InsectGenderBender; biology dictates its protagonist should have been female. The Seven Samurai-esque troupe has a 3:1 (6:2) male-to-female ratio.
** The only major female characters in ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'' are a little girl with limited dialogue, the forgettable love interest Celia, and [[spoiler:Roz the undercover CDA agent]], who has little screen time. The ratio is 4:2.
** ''WesternAnimation/FindingNemo'' has 9:3. The writer explains on the DVD commentary that in fact ''Dory was originally male'' until he saw Creator/EllenDeGeneres on television and realised that was the sweet-but-scatty tone he was looking for.
** ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles'' averts this by being demographically balanced (main cast: two female, two male; supporting cast: one each; villains: one each). Also, each of the adult females are shown to be independently competent, and the main villain finds out that treating his female ally like an expendable resource [[MistreatmentInducedBetrayal will have consequences]].
** ''WesternAnimation/{{Cars}}'': the ratio is 9:3. In the first film, [[ViewerGenderConfusion the racecar sponsoring RevNGo]] is actually the only female competing in the Piston Cup, and in the sequel, Carla Veloso, the Brazilian racecar is the only female competing in the World Grand Prix.
** There is only one female rat in ''WesternAnimation/{{Ratatouille}}'', who speaks to Remy at the end of the film. She only gets one line, though. Remy's family consists of a father and a brother. The major human female character, Colette, is very much aware that she is the only female chef in the restaurant and in a definite minority in the profession in general. She was forced to claw her way up and as a result, feels that she has to be tough and defensive to succeed in a career she worked so hard for. However, when her protégé, Linguini (and secretly Remy the Rat as well), make it clear that they deeply respect her expertise, she [[DefrostingIceQueen softens]] to become a good friend and more later on.
*** The ''Ratatouille'' video game and ''KinectRushADisneyPixarAdventure'' features a female rat with a speaking role named Celine.
** ''WesternAnimation/{{WALL-E}}'' has 4:3, plus a male-sounding text-to-speech program for the autopilot. D-Fib has been confirmed as female in obscure media.
** ''WesternAnimation/{{Up}}'' has 4:2 (4:1 living).
** ''WesternAnimation/{{Brave}}'' has 1:3. However, this is Pixar's first movie with a female protagonist.
* The 80s cartoon series ''WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse'' followed this trope, having only two females (Teela and the Sorceress) in the main cast of heroes (the villains had one, too: Evil-Lynn). They were also the only inhabitants of the planet immune to the steroids in the water supply.
** Heck, in the original comics that came with the toys, before the cartoon series, Teela WAS the Sorceress.
** Its spinoff series ''WesternAnimation/SheRaPrincessOfPower'' was basically the same show [[DistaffCounterpart with the gender ratio reversed]] to appeal to female viewers. Oddly enough, the one male (Bow) was dramatically less muscular than the weakest character in ''He-Man.'' Apparently an all-female planet had no need for steroids.
* On ''WesternAnimation/DragonBooster'', the main cast is made up of three males (Artha, Parm, and Lance), and one female (Kitt). Though initially a rival to Artha (and with potential to grow as a character), Kitt eventually devolved into a cheerleader for Artha who was consistently beaten in any kind of race (despite the fact that she had more experience at racing than Artha, who ''didn't want to race at all'' at the start of the series) and only ever did anything plot-wise by getting mind-controlled or kidnapped. There were other female characters, including a few crew leaders, but, like Kitt, they took a back seat to the males.
** The "Kitt can never win" issue might have some strange connection to the advertising trope where you can't show a girl winning a board game, for fear that it'll be less appealing to boys.
* Inverted in the Italian cartoon ''WesternAnimation/WinxClub'': even if there are some important male characters among the Bad Guys (Darkar and Valtor above all), good male characters that attend the Specialist school usually serve as {{Love Interest}}s for one of the extra powerful fairies for the most part, even if they are given much more space and development than your usual Smurfette in male shows. There's even a magical race (the Pixies) composed ''[[OneGenderRace entirely of females]]'' (they are generated by a Magical Tree). Specialists are totally forgotten by toy manufacturers.
** MagicalGirl show - European version.
* ''Literature/TheRailwaySeries'', the series of books on which ''WesternAnimation/ThomasTheTankEngine'' was originally based, featured just two female engines, Daisy and Mavis, neither of whom were exactly strong characters. The TV series added more female engines in later series, such as Emily, Molly and Rosie, but they are still by far the minority.
** However, coaches such as Annie and Clarabel were always female. Which, given that the coaches couldn't even move without an engine's help, [[UnfortunateImplications made things worse]].
* ''WesternAnimation/SuperRobotMonkeyTeamHyperforceGo'' began with Nova as the sole female, adding Jinmay later. But this may have been intentional as the show was a partial {{Homage}} to super robot anime's FiveManBand style, and [[{{Squick}} Chiro's love interest couldn't very well be a monkey]].
** This led the fangirls of the four monkey males (especially Antauri) to pair themselves up with them by creating robot monkey {{Author Avatar}}s. Which leads, on the other hand, to loads of DieForOurShip (or pairing her up with the other male monkeys) towards Nova (if the fangirl pair herself up with Sparx), and a few {{Crossover Ship}}s.
* ''WesternAnimation/CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers'' had up to five female main characters: Gaia the Spirit of the Earth, Eastern European Planeteer Linka, Asian Planeteer Gi, MadScientist Dr. Blight, and EvilPoacher Mame Slaughter.
* ''WesternAnimation/LegionOfSuperHeroes'' started the show with female Legionnaires Saturn Girl, Phantom Girl, and Triplicate Girl. And then, in Season 2, [[ExecutiveMeddling the powers that be]] decided that male viewership would be put off by so many girls, so the girls were incapacitated and/or inexplicably sidelined for many episodes. Particularly irritating, as the Legion has LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters with a fairly even gender --and species-- balance, and the comics have always averted this trope even all the way back to {{the Silver Age|OfComicBooks}}! The addition of Shrinking Violet in the same season was a [[{{Pun}} very small]] counterbalance.
* The final season of ''WesternAnimation/TheBatman'' featured the {{Justice League|OfAmerica}}, so every other episode was a crossover with a League member. Unfortunately, the League was a boy's club; no Franchise/WonderWoman, BlackCanary, Comicbook/{{Vixen}}, {{Huntress}}, or any other DC heroine. Worse, Batman always brought Robin along on these adventures; never Batgirl, despite her being his first sidekick (in this show anyway), and older to boot. Granted, they at least ''wanted'' to have Wonder Woman, but the rights to the character were not available.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Visionaries}}'', which had Galadria on the heroic Spectral Knights, and Virulina on the evil Darkling Lords.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime'', the ratio of male to female was originally going to be 4:1. The character Cera was originally going to be male, thus being a basic rival for Littlefoot, while Ducky would have been the only female and a fairly stereotypical one at that. However Creator/GeorgeLucas realised that Cera's gender had no real bearing on the plot and asked if Cera could be a female -- but keeping the character's personality exactly the same. The result was a memorably less clichéd female character and an unusual (for the time) male/female rivalry.
** In ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime [[{{Sequelitis}} IV]]'', a guest character called Ali is introduced who is the same species as Littlefoot -- but she's a girl. To get the effect, the animators made her look ''exactly'' like Littlefoot, only she has blue eyes instead of red, [[TertiarySexualCharacteristics slightly longer eyelashes and her skin is a little redder]] (which [[PinkGirlBlueBoy turns pink in the dark for some bizarre reason]]).
** In the TV series, an old male character returned as a permanent member, but then a new female character was added, making the ratio 4:3.
* ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'' had no major female characters outside the wife of the CrankyNeighbor, Bev Bighead, until AffirmativeActionGirl hook-for-a-hand-pirate-style Dr. Hutchinson was created as a love interest for Filburt. They wanted a female with a hook, you see.
* Cheetara of the 1980s ''WesternAnimation/{{Thundercats}}''. There was also Wily-Kit, but she was a pre-teen Wondertwin, one of a pair of {{Tagalong Kid}}s.
** Another female, Pumyra, was added in Season 2...along with ''two more'' male characters.
** 2011 ''Thundercats'' had modern versions of the original TC group, and then added Pumyra... [[http://thundercats.wikia.com/wiki/What_Lies_Above,_Part_2 who left at the end of season two.]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/SpiralZone'', the heroic Zone Riders and evil Black Widows have one female member each.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'' had [[ActionGirl Elisa Maza]] (a human) as the only main female character for a long time, and [[BigBad Demona]] its sole female antagonist. Both are pointedly not TheChick however, and more female characters were added throughout the show's run ([[AffirmativeActionGirl Angela]], [[DarkActionGirl Fox]], [[TheFairFolk Titania]], etc.)
* In ''WesternAnimation/BackAtTheBarnyard'', there are only two cow characters that are biologically deserving of the udders they all retain. Naturally, they're left out of most of the action, instead mainly offering [[PositiveDiscrimination level-headed]] advice that no one takes to.
** As well as Ella, Maddie, and a number of female extras.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents''-Wanda is the only female in the ComicTrio. She either nags or offers advice. Cosmo and Timmy don't treat her very well (marriage jokes, gets called a nag etc).
** Sometimes it [[DependingOnTheWriter depends on the writer]], since some episodes show Timmy as TheHero but Wanda as the one who gets to say "I told you so!" Besides, with the many girl characters for Timmy to be paired with (Tootie, Trixie, Veronica, Vicky for some people), Timmy's mom, the principal Ms. Waxoplax, the ratio is probably about even (if anyone was willing to count it!)
* ''WesternAnimation/ObanStarRacers'': Odd example played straight. The only prominent female character is Eva/Molly, the main character. This is somewhat justified among the humans because of Race Manager Don Wei's belief that [[StayInTheKitchen women shouldn't be racers]]. However, Eva is strong willed and independent, and the few flashbacks we see of her mother show us that Eva's mom, [[spoiler:a star racer killed in a crash]], was also strong willed.
* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'' suffered from this heavily. The only female characters seen by the end of the first season were Fire, who barely had a full minute of screen time, and Katana, who appeared in one episode and didn't speak until the end.
** The series' director addressed this in an interview on Toonzone; since the series would have an accompanying toy line (see trope description ''way'' back up at the top) they consciously focused on the male heroes for the first 13 episodes. The second season includes not only Huntress, but Black Canary as well.
** By the time the show ended, a number of other female heroes such as Comicbook/{{Vixen}} and Franchise/WonderWoman had appeared. However, the final season's version of the Comicbook/{{Justice League|International}} had nine men and only two women.
* Shao Lin is the only female monkey on ''WesternAnimation/CaptainSimianAndTheSpaceMonkeys'', with the exception of [[MeaningfulName Lilith]], who was in fact [[spoiler:an android]] so she doesn't count. The number of female cast is very low, so that when a female character appears she is very noticeable. Interestingly enough Shao Lin is a bona fide ActionGirl, the most skilled in martial arts and TheCaptain's second-in-command.
* Susan/Ginormica is the only woman in the main cast of ''WesternAnimation/MonstersVsAliens'' ("We are in the presence of the rare female monster."). However, she is the main character and has the most CharacterDevelopment of anyone else, going from TheChick to ActionGirl. The rest of the female characters are in small, stereotypical roles, with the exception of the girl [[AutoErotica making out in a car]], which reverses the usual role by being more assertive than her milquetoast boyfriend.
** The jury is still out on whether [[spoiler:Insectosaurus is female or not, since he/she has eyelashes in his/her final form as a butterfly]]. Even so, the ratio of female monsters to male would still be 2:5.
* ''WesternAnimation/StormHawks'' has one girl (of the CloserToEarth variety) on the FiveManBand. However, it mitigates the trope with a female recurring character who has been invited to join the team several times (she's something of a SixthRanger), and a ''female BigBad'' as well as one major female minion (but the male Dragon gets the most villain screentime).
* ''WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom'' is actually pretty good about balancing the main and/or important characters between genders. We get the males Danny, Tucker, and Jack. The female range are Sam, Valerie, Jazz, and Maddie--none of whom fits in the stereotypical TheChick role and are strong female characters in their own rights. If you want, you can also add in males Lancer and Dash, but slightly balanced with Paulina. Though this only counts for the good guys. The villains have more males then females.
* ''WesternAnimation/StreetSharks'' had Lena, who acted as a spy and collected information for the guys (and sprung them from traps whenever they got kidnapped). She mostly vanished towards the end though.
* ''WesternAnimation/ElTigre'' is ''really'' bad about this. The only regular female character is the considered highly annoying [[GenkiGirl Frida Suarez]], and all the male characters frequently display cliche Latino machismo in all its glory. (For example, "Rivera men never back down", [[BerserkButton '''COWARDS?!'']], and of course, the "Rivera...Super...Macho...'''BLITZ'''!") Maria is either a timid, hyperventilating DamselInDistress or a crazy KnightTemplar, [[DarkActionGirl the Flock]] all pine over the Rivera man of their particular age group, and no one honors the female Riveras in Dia de los Muertos. It still rocks, though. And I guess it gets points for [[BigBad the most powerful villain]] being a (long dead) woman.
* ''WesternAnimation/XiaolinShowdown'' - Kimiko is the only female on the Xiaolin side, while Kannappe, Wuya, Clay's sister, and the evil mermaid make up the Heylin (evil) side. This almost seems to imply that Kimiko is the only female member because she is the exception to the rule of females automatically calling for the side of evil.
* The male cast of ''WesternAnimation/KaBlam!'' (that was included in over three episodes) consisted of Henry, Mr. Foot, and Mr. Stockdale (starting Season 4). "Over three appearances" girl? June. However, she wasn't the stereotypical [[TheChick chick]], as she was just originally a dumber, over-excited, female version of Henry.
** ''WesternAnimation/ActionLeagueNow'''s only main female was Thundergirl, and Justice (the dog) since it switched from male to female in some episodes.
* The cartoon adaptation of ''[[Literature/{{Redwall}} Martin the Warrior]]'' averted this by changing the normally 3:1 ratio to 2:2, by making Pallum the Hedgehog a girl.
* On ''WesternAnimation/JimmyTwoShoes'', Heloise is the only regular female character. This is notable in the title sequence, where she's the ''only'' female in the final group shot at 5:1. Recurring characters [[CrazyAwesome Saffi]] and [[RichBitch Jez]] ease this a bit, but they still tend not to have much of a role.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheBotsMaster'' has this too. The good guys have two girls in their ranks: Blitzy, ZZ's kid sister, and Swang, the only (confirmed) female [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin boyzz]] out of twenty. There was once another female introduced, Momzz, but she semi-died by the end of the episode. The bad guys are a bit better in that respect. With only three individuals in the core group, the one female among them has a relatively bigger input.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Hero 108}}'''s Mystique Sonia is the only confirmed female member of First Squad.
* Played straight on ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGalaxyRangers'', as Niko was the ActionGirl, and had the stereotypical PsychicPowers. Series creator Robert Mandell attempted to compensate by keeping the DistressBall evenly passed and by throwing in some awesome guest characters, such as Daisy O'Mega and Audra Miles. The BigBad of the series was a case of GodSaveUsFromTheQueen, and a truly dangerous threat.
** However, Mandell ''inverted'' the trope with ''WesternAnimation/PrincessGwenevereAndTheJewelRiders''. Barely a Y chromosome to be seen.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{WITCH}}'' inverted this heavily, though the animated version of the series was not as bad as the comic version. By the time the cartoon ended, there was a 1:1 ration for guys/girls (Will, Irma, Cornelia, Taranee, Hay Lin/Caleb, Blunk, Matt, Mr. Huggles, Napoleon). The comic is a 5:1 ratio (The girls to Matt) - it was 5:2, but then the Oracle was PutOnABus. The rest? [[spoiler:Caleb's also PutOnABus, Blunk doesn't exist here and Mr. Huggles died early on.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' is pretty bad about this. All of the four[[note]]five if you count [[AndZoidberg Butters]][[/note]] main characters are boys, with only one girl (Wendy) having any significance, and even then only in a select few episodes (not to mention she [[TheScrappy isn't that well liked in the first place]]).
** Played with in the "You Got F'ed in the A" episode of ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'', when Stan is putting together his dance team.
---> "We can't be a dance troupe with just guys. [[HaveIMentionedIAmHeterosexualToday People will think we're fags]]"
* Two recent Disney films, ''Disney/ThePrincessAndTheFrog'' and ''Disney/{{Tangled}}'', are ostensibly aimed at girls, and have female lead characters, but otherwise they both have 1:3 female-to-male ratio -- female lead, male {{love interest|s}} and co-lead, two male (animal) supporting characters. Then one woman in a supporting role (a mentor in ''Princess,'' a villain in ''Tangled''). ''Princess'' does slightly better, featuring Tiana's mother and her supportive friend, Charlotte.
* Until the very end of the premiere of ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'' there are no females, and for several episodes thereafter there's only Miss Martian. Even when Artemis joined up, there was still a pretty noticeable disparity for the bulk of the first season.
** Averted as of "Usual Suspects". As of the first season finale, the team had an even split of four boys and four girls.
** And then in season two, the new line-up consists of five boys and four girls.
** Its notable that every group other than the Team and the JusticeLeague seem to follow this trope: [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen Queen Bee]] for [[OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness the Light]], [[GreenThumb Poison Ivy]] for the [[DiscOneFinalBoss Injustice League]], [[BilingualBonus Asami]] for [[RagtagBunchOfMisfits the Runaways]], [[MasterOfIllusion Dreamer]] for the [[PhysicalGod Forever People]], etc.
* Pretty noticeable in ''WesternAnimation/AvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'', with Wasp serving as the sole female Avenger in season 1. This was slightly mitigated in season 2 by adding Comicbook/MsMarvel to the cast, but this was also in addition to the Vision joining the team. By the time the final episode rolled around, the team consisted of eight men and only two women.
** While they never officially joined the team, Black Widow and Mockingbird did appear as {{Guest Star Party Member}}s in a small number of episodes. Maria Hill was also a prominent supporting character throughout the series' run. A few other heroines like Quake and Abigail Brand appeared in small roles as well.
** At least going by the promo poster, ''WesternAnimation/AvengersAssemble'', looks to suffer from this as well. Comicbook/BlackWidow is the only female hero on a team with seven members (being [[Film/TheAvengers the movie lineup]] plus the Falcon).
* ''WesternAnimation/MenInBlack: The Series'' had Agent L. Few other female agents were seen, fewer still had any dialogue.
* For the entire first season of ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'', there was only one female in the cast: Margaret the cardinal. She only appeared in three episodes, one of which was only via dream sequence. However, Season 2 has introduced another female character, and both of them are getting considerably more screen time.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' (being based on retro action/adventure series like ''Jonny Quest'') is generally a boys' club--the only female character to appear semi-regularly is the villainess Dr. Girlfriend (whose gender is sometimes debated [[VocalDissonance for some reason]]), DarkMistress[=/=]TheDragon to The Monarch . The series also has Molotov Cocktease as a [[DatingCatwoman villainess/Brock's love interest]] who appears at least once a season, but[[spoiler: has possibly been KilledOffForReal at the end of Season 4.]] Triana Orpheus is popular with the fanbase but rarely appears and as of Season 4, no longer lives in the Venture compound.
* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuyPresentsLaughItUpFuzzball'' spoofed how few major original trilogy ''Franchise/StarWars'' characters were women.
-->'''Chris/Luke:''' A sister! Who is it?
--> '''Herbert/Obi-Wan:''' Who do you think it is? Who's the only goddamn woman in the galaxy?
** Also parodied with Meg's roles in each spoof which also ties in with her ButtMonkey status. Because of the lack of female roles in ''Star Wars'' and the fact that Lois plays Leia, Meg is forced to always play the role of some minor genderless alien creature.
* {{Kaeloo}} is the only female in the main cast or her own series. Even so, [[ViewerGenderConfusion most viewers find it hard to tell]].
* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' {{invert|edTrope}}s the Smurfette Principle with Spike, who is the only male in the regular cast.
* Sliced Ice for the ''WesternAnimation/SkysurferStrikeForce''.
* ''WesternAnimation/DoubleDragon'' starts out with Oldest Dragon[[note]][[spoiler:died in the first ep]][[/note]], two Dragon Warriors, and one female police officer. As the series progressed they add more warriors and acquired more allies. The end result was 7:1 male/female actual Dragon Warriors, four junior Dragons (all teen/preteen males), 1:3 male/female ally ratio (all three girls are tough, smart support and fighting help), one older-and-wiser female adviser. The Twins' mother only had a one-shot appearance that [[spoiler:ends with her devoting her life to permanently weakening the Black Flame.]] The Dragons did do better then the Shadow Warriors; not a single female among the bad guys!
* ''WesternAnimation/BuzzLightyearOfStarCommand'' has Princess Mira Nova, one of only a few female space rangers (although the ship turned out to have a female programming) and Gravatina, the only recurring female villain. Played with a bit with Dr. Ozma Furbanna, who's the only human on the planet Karn, a world filled with deadly creatures. Also, the Galactic President is a woman.
* [[WesternAnimation/ChipNDaleRescueRangers Gadget]], oh so much.
* ''{{WesternAnimation/Motorcity}}'': Julie is the only female member of the Burners. She's not the only female in the show's cast, as there's also Tennie, Foxy and Kaia, but Claire isn't so much an ActionGirl.
[[/folder]]

!!Examples

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* Most shojo manga have a male cast that far exceeds the female cast. Even when the shojo manga is not a harem series, the guy-girl ratio is generally 4 to 1. In spite of the girl being the main character, many of the problems of the manga are centered around the guys with the girls existing as either love interests or emotional support. The female characters [[UsefulNotes/TheBechdelTest barely interact with each other]] except when they are competing for a guy. Even then, one of the girls [[GreenEyedMonster ends]] [[AlphaBitch up]] [[SpoiledBrat being]] [[ManipulativeBastard very]] [[RichBitch cruel]] to the other. What's particularly egregious about this is that these stories are written by women for women.
* ''Manga/DragonBall Z'' is notorious for this; Bulma is the only female character through nearly its entire run with any significant screentime. This might also reflect the small yet vocal fanbase for Pan, a female Saiyan descendant.
** You could very arguably make a case for [=ChiChi=], Videl, and Android 18 as regulars, but the latter two don't appear until later in the series.
** The original Dragon Ball series, however, started with a cast of a girl and a boy, later adding males Yamcha and Oolong and (maybe) female Puar. The males started to outnumber the females later, where against all the fighters in the cast there were only Chi-chi and Lunch, and then the latter was [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome forgotten]].
* In ''GhostInTheShell'', the only woman is Major Motoko Kusanagi, but she is both TheProtagonist and TheLeader. Justified due to the fact that, while speculative fiction, it preserves the country's real world issues. Sexism in the government is dealt with explicitly later in Stand Alone Complex, and is a major catalyst for many of the political issues encountered later. Given this attitude, it's not unthinkable that an Elite government operations unit would have difficulty maintaining women not hyper-competent.
* ''{{Mazinger}}'':
** ''Anime/MazingerZ'': Sayaka Yumi was the only female main character (albeit, unlike other Smurfettes, she demanded being taken seriously like her own individual) and the only recurring female character until Misato appeared in the last season. Between the bad guys, TheDragon Baron Ashura may or may not count like female character. Dr. Hell mostly "hired" males (let's think of it, [[FridgeBrilliance it can be infered from his backstory he had actually come to loathe women]]), but every so often he made {{Robot Girl}}s or female androids [[spoiler:Minerva, Erika, the Gamia triplets, the robots impersonated Hitomi and Kouji and Shiro's mother...)]]
** ''Anime/GreatMazinger'': Jun Hono was the only female character between the heroes (and Marquiss Janus the only female member of the Mykene high command. Then again, the remainder members were humans whose brains had been grafted into HumongousMecha, so it was hard telling). That changed during the last chapters, when Sayaka was BackForTheFinale and the male to female ratio became 3:2. In the GosakuOta manga, Misato again was a recurring character in the last arcs, so the ratio became 3:3.
** ''Anime/UFORoboGrendizer'': Grendizer played this trope with Hikaru until the third season when Maria joined the team and the gender ratio became 2:2.
* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' enforces this trope religiously, regardless of the size of the group. There is one female in every Genin team (that matters), there is one female among the five Jonin senseis (all the ones we've seen that aren't teachers are male), there's one known female member of ANBU, there is one female among the three Chuunin Exam proctors, there is one female among the Sound Five, there is only one female among the Akatsuki, only one female in Snake/Hawk, and there's even a single female [[spoiler:Pain body and even that was a replacement for another one that died]]. We might as well call it "The Kunoichi Principle".
** There has been ''one'' recent group that is an exception: the Cloud village team taught by a man named Killer Bee ([[spoiler:the host of the eight-tailed beast]]) is the first to have two girls (Karui and Samui) and one guy (Omoi), although arguably, that squad is one person short since Samui is the squad's leader, a position equivalent to Kurenai/Kakashi/Gai's.
** Although this can be read as there being a 2:1 male to female ratio, thus making 1/3 of the main and secondary characters female and therefore averting this trope - 1/3 of [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters a large cast]] is much more than one.
** Also, Kishi has obviously been trying to remedy this lately - For example, there are two females amongst the Jinjuuriki, two of the five Kages are female, he introduced Shiho the investigation squad girl, Naruto's Mother and the first and third Hokage's wives... . Note that the lone Akatsuki woman fought on par with the BigBad, and while the girl in Taka/Hebi wasn't much of a combatant, her [[TheForceIsStrongWithThisOne abilities]] were by far the [[BoringButPractical most useful]], given that their leader already had more than enough raw combat power on his own.
* Similarly, in ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'', there has only been one female on the main team out of three or four. For a long time, this was Misty, who always took a backseat to Ash's adventures. The other two token females, May and Dawn, are somewhat like female versions of Ash, and have a plot similar to Ash's but heavily feminized. This might be intentional, as the latter two are supposed to represent the otherwise identical protagonists you can choose in the ''Pokemon'' games, with the show itself noting that May was copying Ash's battle-style too much. Black and White plays this straight considering only the main trio (the usual TwoGuysAndAGirl) but the trope is averted if the various [[TheRival rivals]] are taken into account (three girls versus two boys).
** Before catching Snivy, Pidove was the only female on Ash's Unova team. Because of this, Pidove was the only one who could get close to Snivy without being affected by Attract.[[note]]Attract causes foes of the opposite gender to fall in love with them.[[/note]]
** The various manga series are typically better at this.
* ''Manga/PokemonSpecial'' has this in the whole first arc...[[spoiler:then at the end of the yellow arc, we discover that ''he'' is a ''she'']].
** While all the main characters of the various regions have a [[TwoGuysAndAGirl 2:1 ratio when it comes to males and females]], it still avoids the Principle by having a healthy-sized supporting cast who regularly interacts with them, girls included.
* Between the two fighting groups in ''Manga/{{X 1999}}'', there is only one woman ([[HollywoodNerd Satsuki]]) among the Dragons of Earth, as opposed to three ([[TheIngenue Yuzuriha,]] [[HookerWithAHeartOfGold Karen,]] and [[DefrostingIceQueen Arashi]]) among the Dragons of Heaven.
** [[spoiler:Although [[AmbiguousGender Nataku]] could count as a girl]]
* ''Roleplay/RecordOfLodossWar'' has a typical fantasy adventuring group which is mostly male. The sole female main character is a blond elf named Deedlit (keep in mind that this series was based on an actual TabletopGames campaign played by a bunch of Japanese college fraternity brothers in the late Seventies -- women didn't always fit well into hack'n'slash scenarios).
** The sequel ''Chronicles of the Heroic Knight'' averts this. The "new generation" of heroes consists of three (or four) male and three female characters. As with the previous heroes, Shiris was given a bigger role, and former FauxActionGirl Deedlit was [[ActionGirl markedly more competent]] -- both had to save the male heroes more than once.
* Inverted in ''Manga/AzumangaDaioh'' - there are only ''two'' male characters (three if you count TheOneGuy) with a notable role in the series. Every other main character in the series is female; the gender ratio is 1:5 or 3:10.
* In ''SaintSeiyaOmega'', Aquila Yuna is the only girl among the Bronze Saints. And on the contrary of the usual series' history where women are mostly not very competent, being the only girl doesn't exclude Yuna to be a highly competent ActionGirl, equally capable of accomplishing feats of badassery that other boys in the series are capable of.
* ''Anime/ScienceNinjaTeamGatchaman'' (and its various CutAndPasteTranslation including ''Anime/BattleOfThePlanets'' and ''G-Force: Guardians of Space'') has one heroine in a squad of five heroes. Partly justified in that they are fundamentally an elite military unit.
* ''Anime/{{Voltron}}'' (''Golion'') also has one heroine in a squad of heroes. ''Dairugger XIV'' didn't have that much better a ratio either, with roughly three females in ''three'' squads. Notably, Princess Allura originally only joined the team as a replacement after one member of the all-male FiveManBand was killed. Even then, it was over everyone else's objections, and only because they couldn't form the Giant Robot without a fifth member.
** That said, Princess Romelle could be seen as an additional female character, even though she doesn't make her debut until Episode 17, and a more kick-ass one than Allura. (Unlike the former, Romelle actually 'fights back' against would-be attackers.) [[EnsembleDarkhorse Queen Merla]] was added by the American writers/editors of the series for the second season that got distributed to the Western market.
* ''Anime/UchuuSenkanYamato'' has -- you guessed it -- one heroine in a squad of heroes. Early episodes showed more women among the crew, but they all abruptly disappeared.
* ''Franchise/{{Digimon}}'' tends to vary drastically in how well it handles the problem. The worst was ''Anime/DigimonFrontier'', which was 1 out of 5 on both the good ''and'' evil sides (at least they were [[MsFanservice cute to look at]]). ''Anime/DigimonTamers'' did best, with 3 out of 8, the same ratio as ''Anime/DigimonAdventure''. For the record, ''Anime/DigimonAdventure02'' was 2 out of 6 (though girls were fairly well-represented among the international Chosen), ''Anime/DigimonSavers'' was 1 out of 3 (later 1 out of 4) among the main cast, and ''Anime/DigimonXrosWars'' spent most of its time at 1 out of 3 as well, with two different girls being the "1" at separate times. [[FromBadToWorse Then]] came its followup, ''Anime/DigimonXrosWarsTheYoungHuntersLeapingThroughTime'', which appears to be at 0 out of 3 among the heroes and just 1 out of 6 among the central humans as a whole.
* ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}'' uses this to varying degrees from series to series. Examples:
** ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing Gundam Wing]]'' has a roughly 1:1 male:female ratio, but few of the woman are pilots and even fewer are main characters.
** ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundam00 Gundam 00]]'' has at least a high frequency of female members, but none is a pilot (depending on your opinion on Tieria, that is). At least one is a high ranking officer and one is a capable pilot.
*** There is Chall Austica of manga-only 00P fame.
** ''[[Anime/MobileFighterGGundam G Gundam]]'', which mainly is about a fighting tournament, has one female participant shown, and a handful of other female members....about half of which are part of one character's ''cheerleading squad''. They act as his support crew too, but it's sort of difficult to remember that they're supposed to be highly skilled engineers when they're being paraded around in bathing suits for no particular reason.
** UC makes things more complicated. ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'' had a fair amount of female characters, but only two were mobile suit pilots, one who wasn't very good and one who was also the main character's {{Love Interest|s}}. However, ''Zeta'' and ''ZZ'' were much better about this: ''Zeta'' had about as many female elites as males (Emma, Reccoah, Sarah, Fa, Rosamie, Four, Lyla, Maua, and Haman of course) ''ZZ'' had about the same quota (Elle, Roux, the Purus, Chara, etc), also LadyOfWar Haman got the part of the main villain throughout the bigger part of the series.
*** A major female character in the first Gundam series ([[spoiler:Sayla]]) was planned to be far more important in the storyline before her voice actress died unexpectedly.
** ''Manga/MobileSuitGundamEcoleDuCiel'' is so far the only ''Gundam'' work with a female as the main character.
** While not the main character, Chris Mckenzie of [[Anime/MobileSuitGundam0080WarInThePocket War In The Pocket]] was the only female pilot, but is also the best one in the series, being a test pilot for the Gundam Alex.
** Yoshiyuki Tomino reportedly ''wanted'' the main character of ''Anime/TurnAGundam'' to be female, but was overruled by the producers. [[WriterRevolt This may explain why]] the male lead spends most of the series [[WholesomeCrossdresser disguised as a girl]].
** ''Manga/GundamSentinel'' take it to another level, the ''only'' active female character is ALICE, and she is ''mobile suit's AI''. She has personality of little girl, but no humanoid appearance, not even avatar image on screen. On other hand, she has more CharacterDevelopment than TheHero and make you wonder if the latter's just a DecoyProtagonist.
* In ''Anime/YuGiOh'' the only female character to be around during the show's entire run is Anzu among a group of Yami Yugi, Yugi, Jounouchi, Honda, Kaiba, Mokuba, and to an extent Bakura and Otoji. Mai and Shizuka put in appearance now and then but are really secondary characters.
** The Toei anime added [[AscendedExtra Miho]], the [[TomboyAndGirlyGirl Girly Girl to Anzu's Tomboy]].
** In the spin-off ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'' it gets even worse - Asuka is the only girl among Judai, Sho, Ryo, Manjoume, Daichi, Ed and Tyranno. The only other female cast member to get more than a few episodes was Rei, who didn't join the cast until the third season and even then didn't get a lot of screentime in comparison to the rest of the cast.
* The director of ''Manga/{{Mai-HiME}}'' claimed in an interview that he deliberately wanted to invert this trope. Indeed, the important male cast is considerably smaller than that of the female cast. But considering that this a MagicalGirl team show, the effort's [[ImprobablyFemaleCast kinda misapplied]].
* ''Manga/OnePiece'' has two female Straw Hats (with one temporary member), one female Supernova, and one female Warlord of the Sea, one female Giant[[note]]who is also a Marine[[/note]], and one Celestial Dragon. Furthermore, [[spoiler:one of the four emperors, Big Mom, is female.]]. Most of the evil organizations have exactly one female member, [[DesignatedGirlFight whom Nami tends to fight]], with the notable exception of Baroque Works (half its Officer Agents are female, although most of the Mooks are male), and '''all''' of Amazon Lily is female.
* While half of the Soul Reaper lieutenants in ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'' are female, only two of the captains are. There is also only one female Espada and [[spoiler:two]] former Espada, and the current one is the only one other than Stark to have female fraccion. Ichigo's team seems to be more balanced with a 3:2 guys:girls ratio
** Though in the case of Starrk, [[spoiler:Lilynette is actually his other half. When they were made into Arrancar, they separated into two bodies rather than just a body and a sword. Starrk specifically says, "We are the Primera [first] Espada".]]
** Similarly with the Vizard. Though the number is almost equal with a 3:5 the Principle is still in effect since [[spoiler:all three females are former Lieutenants while four of the five male members are former Captains.]]
* ''Manga/{{Appleseed}}'' and ''AppleseedExMachina'' twist this trope by having the one and only female elite soldier, Deunan Knute, top every battle ranking. While she ''is'' the Smurfette with respect to numbers her role defies the trope's framework by fashioning her as TheHero as well as an ueber-competent soldier who tops even her technologically-enhanced teammates (and foes), mechanical and biological alike. Note that the larger "team" including politicians and foot soldiers/pawns does feature many females, with politicians being almost exclusively female, e.g. Prime Minister Athena or Ambassador (and Deunan's friend) Hitomi. This is somehow {{handwave}}d by implying [[spoiler:most politicians are bioroids for humanity's own good]]. Hyper-strong, but not unemotional, female leads are characteristic of ShirowMasamune's manga, from which both the ''Appleseed'' and ''GhostInTheShell'' cinematic/TV works are derived. Actually, the female politician/male fighter "division of labor" seems reasonable even for [[RealLife real-world]] implementation.
** If one looks closely during the opening action scene and the briefing room scenes, they can find the ''real'' smurfette. There's one other female member of E.S.W.A.T. (who is never named, never speaks, and sure as hell never does anything cool; that's [[{{Badass}} Deunan's job]]).
* In ''Manga/AxisPowersHetalia'', Hungary is the only female character who is regularly recurring. There are other females, but they have only been shown in a few strips or only on the artist's blog. However, considering the tone of the series and the fact that Hungary herself is a YaoiFangirl, this may be an example of a CastFullOfPrettyBoys.
** Counter to the [[DieForOurShip usual progression]] of such a circumstance, Hungary, Belarus, Ukraine, Lichtenstein, and Taiwan are all varying degrees of EnsembleDarkHorse. Vietnam, Belgium, and the African nations haven't gained such distinction, unfortunately. The fans' fondness of [[AttractiveBentGender gender bending]] deserves mention, too.
* Riza Hawkeye is the only woman in Roy Mustang's group in ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist''. Somewhat justified in that there are fewer women in the military than there are men, and the reason she's in the group in the first place is because she's Mustang's aide, confidante, and bodyguard. She's TheChick only in the sense of being the sole female and dearly loved by her male counterparts; fact is, she's more badass than any of the other four subordinates. This may also be justified, as the country that the series mainly takes place in is an alternate-universe version of pre-World War II Germany, an era where seeing women in the military was a lot less common.
** Among the homunculi, Lust is the only female (though Envy is genderless according to WordOfGod).
* Heeello, ''Manga/{{BioMeat|Nectar}}''. One female lead the entire time (until part 3, which introduces a [[WiseBeyondTheirYears wise beyond her years]] 10-year-old), and the only one on the team without a specific role other than, you guessed it, moral support and maturity. Oh, and CassandraTruth. Part 2 is especially glaring.
** Presumably it's especially glaring because they're teenagers, which heightens the difference between girls and boys more than in elementary school. Bonus points for two of the boys, especially Shinko, having gotten pretty, and the fat one being less absurd-looking than before.
* ''Anime/RevolutionaryGirlUtena'' inverts this trope with the Black Rose Duelists (as opposed to the regular duelists chosen by [[spoiler:Akio]]). Discounting the man manipulating them, Mikage, there are five girls that were chosen, and one boy, Mitsuru. Another boy, Tatsuya, was lured into becoming one but was rejected.
* In ''Manga/KatekyoHitmanReborn'', there is only one female, [[TheChick Chrome Dokuro]], amongst Tsuna's six Guardians. Even worse, as the real Mist Guardian is [[MasterOfIllusion Mukuro Rokudo]], and Chrome is mostly just a [[SealedBadassInACan vessel for him]]. Meaning instead of one woman, there's half a woman. The illusion of a woman. Less than woman.
* In ''Manga/{{Eyeshield 21}}'', nearly every team has a female manager. While it IS understandable that there would a good number of female managers, as it's the only football-related position open to girls at most schools, the fact that there appear to be NO male managers for any team makes you wonder if it's a gender-specific position.
** The only exception to the "manager" rule is the Teikoku Alexanders, whose token female is the quarterback.
* ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'' only had one prominent female fighter in the manga and that was the village guardian Mamiya. In the Atomiswave fighting game, as well as in ''[[VideoGame/FistOfTheNorthStarKensRage Ken's Rage]]'', her fighting abilities are exaggerated for game purposes in order to match her against the Hokuto Shinken and Nanto Seiken masters, whereas in the manga she got overpowered by a mere nameless underling of Uighur.
* In ''Manga/DeathNote'', Rem is the only female shinigami to appear in the main story. The rest of the cast is predominantly male too, but this is justified somewhat by the fact that most of the characters are detectives or high-ranking businesspeople, which are predominantly male groups in real-life Japan.
** This happens to the Kira Task Force in the Live Action Film, where WordOfGod states that she was added simply to make it so it wasn't an all male team like in the anime.
* In ''Manga/TanteiGakuenQ'', Minami Megumi is the only female student in the Q-class, and her role is mostly limited to memorising and recollecting scenes with her photographic memory.
** Possibly subverted with the A-class, because although Yukihira Sakurako is the only female [[spoiler:until another female member joins]] in the group, she is the only one in the class who gets significant screen time, other than PluckyComicRelief Saburomaru.
* This trope is scaled up for ''Anime/LegendOfGalacticHeroes''. It's pretty conspicuous that there are only five notable female characters among a ''literal cast of HUNDREDS'' in a 110 episode saga, [[spoiler:one of whom dies early on]]. The Alliance has an ActionGirl and TheChick among its ranks, while the Empire has another Chick and the one woman who even comes close to the {{Magnificent Bastard}}ry of the male characters. This is partly justified by the Empire's archaic social structures.
* Casca is the only woman in the Band of the Hawk from ''Manga/{{Berserk}}'' and mainly serves as Griffith's NumberTwo. She's quite respected by pretty much the entire band, at least some of whom refer to her as "anego" (sister). In time, she becomes the {{Love Interest|s}} of Guts. When the Eclipse goes down, [[spoiler:she becomes the victim of a horrific BreakTheCutie ordeal, culminating in her rape at the hands of Femto right in front of Guts]]. Two years after the horror, she and Guts form the core of a new group of TrueCompanions later on, which is fairly evenly split between four guys (Guts, Serpico, Isidro and Puck) and four girls (herself, Farnese, Schierke and Evarella), but because of her traumatized post-Eclipse state, she's not the combatant that she used to be. It's also interesting to add that despite the introduction of other [[FauxActionGirl seemingly capable female warriors,]] Casca remains the series' only legit ActionGirl.
* ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' is severely lacking in the female department until Part 6. Most of the women up to that point are either secondary characters or love interests with no real role in the story, and almost all the antagonists are men as well.
** Averted in Part 6, with Jolyne Kujo as protagonist with two of her closest allies being women, and at least a couple of female antagonists.
* ''Manga/SailorMoon'' inverts this, Tuxedo Mask and Artemis being the only male (non-villain) primary character.
* Manga/{{Toriko}} is very guilty of this. Rin is the only woman fighter of the main cast, and seems to be in a more supporting role anyway. Tina, a noncombatant, is somewhat more prominently featured than Rin, but in a WorldOfBadass she sits in the realm of normal, IntrepidReporter though she is.
* Done kind of oddly in ''Anime/{{K}}'': Each of the three main groups has exactly one female in them, but they're all fairly important, and of the unaffiliated characters, Kukuri gets by far the most screentime, and she's quite female. The end result is mostly the impression that the character designer didn't want to draw girls if they didn't have to.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comics]]
* [[TropeNamers Named for]] Smurfette, the only female [[Franchise/TheSmurfs Smurf]] for years out of a population of 100.
** Ironically, ''The Smurfs'' [[WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs cartoon]] actually toned this ''down'', a little. While you could argue Smurfette is as much a stereotype as any other specific smurf, Peyo (their creator) caught some flak by admitting she was not intended to be a real heroic character at all, describing her in mostly childish ways. The Creator/{{Hanna-Barbera}} show only played this up in her origin, where she was created by Gargamel to disrupt the lives of the Smurfs. Otherwise, Smurfette is typically a strong-willed type who is often ready to take charge when necessary in Papa Smurf's absence.
** Later, another female Smurf, the younger and more tomboyish Sassette, was created by similar means as Smurfette. The penultimate season added Nanny Smurf, who confusingly seems to have been a natural female Smurf.
** Although, as noted in ''Film/DonnieDarko'', as a creation of Gargamel Smufette wasn't a true Smurf. Originally, the Smurfs were all male (or possibly asexual). One cartoon explained that smurfs did not reproduce the way most creatures did; a stork magically delivered them as infants on nights when there was a blue moon. Thus, gender was a moot point.
** This was later spoofed in ''Comicbook/{{Fables}}''. The founders of Smalltown were members of a [[Literature/GulliversTravels Lilliput]] army (i.e. all men), until Literature/{{Thumbelina}} showed up. One member had to go find more of the magic barley seeds that she grew from because of mass riots and fighting over her.
* ''ComicStrip/BloomCounty'''s cast had a series of strips dealing with the necessity of introducing a female character after the Supreme Court declared male-only clubs unconstitutional. ("Nothing's more 'male-only' than Bloom County! We've GOT to introduce a WOMAN!") Before, the comic strip had several notable reoccurring female characters including the feminist schoolteacher Ms. Harlow, who actually ''did'' [[DoesNotLikeMen like men]]. Eventually, Ronald-Ann was created as a regular, who subverted the trope by ''not'' being TheChick. [[spoiler:Rosebud the Basselope]] was also revealed to be female, much to the surprise of the cast. Unfortunately, it looks like this was {{retcon}}ned to oblivion.
** Even more directly addressed in the not-a-sequel-series-I-swear, ''Outland''. In the strip, a woman asked why all the well-known animal characters in comics and animation are all male; any female animal characters were just [[DistaffCounterpart The Girlfriend]]. Opus announced that the strip was just about to hire the first major female animal character star to join the main cast, Hazel the Hedgehog. In a brilliant sequence that ran for ''weeks'', she lampshaded ''why'' most animal characters are male. (Are we asking girls to identify with a "little pig-rodent"? Can she participate in a slapstick pie fight if depicting violence against females is taboo? Is she still her own distinct character if we ''have'' to [[TertiarySexualCharacteristics put a bow on her head?]])
* In Hergé's ''Franchise/{{Tintin}}'' comics, just about the only recurring female character is Bianca Castafiore, who's an impossible diva. Oh, and her maid.
** WordOfGod says that Hergé had a lot of trouble drawing adult characters that weren't ugly or ridiculous (Tintin doesn't count, as the character design is almost childish and very simple anyway) - something that didn't bother Hergé when it came to men, but annoyed him greatly when drawing women. He actually started to get better at it in the latter albums, and a cute female character with a major role was introduced in "Tintin et l'Alph-Art", but this effort suffered AuthorExistenceFailure.
* Alison Bechdel's ''ComicStrip/DykesToWatchOutFor'' initially inverted this, with scarcely any male characters, partly as a response to the Smurfette principle (as discussed in ''The Indelible Alison Bechdel'') and partly to force male readers to identify with the female characters, as women often have to identify with male characters. Over the last several years, more male characters have appeared; one of the main characters, Sparrow, had a long-term relationship and a child with a man named Stuart. This may have also been her accommodating what has become to be known as UsefulNotes/TheBechdelTest in her own work.
* When the ''Comicbook/FantasticFour'' started in 1961, the Invisible Girl was the only female member, and she was the weakest of the four (her force fields weren't invented till later).
* When the ''Comicbook/{{X-Men}}'' started in 1963, Jean Grey was the only female member, and the weakest (it was a decade before she got Phoenix powers).
** Polaris, the second female to join the team, didn't join until 1969, although she has had a sporadic history with the team.
** When the "New X-Men" started in 1975, {{Storm}} was the only female member. Though she certainly wasn't the weakest (and seeing as how ChrisClaremont was writing, she wasn't alone for long, either).
** Eventually, the X-Men became quite possibly the heaviest aversion of this trope in the entire genre. At some points in their history, female characters actually outnumbered the males.
** The original incarnation of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants had ScarletWitch as its only female member, though also the weakest at the time (mostly due to her inexperience with her powers).
*** Averted during the "Sisterhood of Evil" era, when the three female members of the team carried on in the absence of the then incarcerated male members.
* When ''Comicbook/TheAvengers'' started in 1963, TheWasp was the only female member, and the weakest. Then all the original members left in 1965, but there was still only one female, the Scarlet Witch, who was the weakest...[[AGodAmI at the time]].
** [[TookALevelInBadass They got better though]]. Scarlet Witch grew to become one of the most powerful mutants in the 'verse, and the team has since then featured several significant female characters, like Comicbook/MsMarvel, Comicbook/BlackWidow, and Comicbook/{{Spider-Woman}}.
** The Wasp herself eventually became a badass hero in her own right and she even led the Avengers.
* When the ''JusticeLeagueOfAmerica'' started in 1960, Franchise/WonderWoman was the only female member, and though not ''necessarily'' the weakest, was certainly the most resembling. At least the early Gardner Fox stories treated her like the other members, and not like TheChick. Though she soon became the secretary at the JLA's meetings, taking minutes and so on. It took almost a decade before BlackCanary became the second female member (and that was only after Wonder Woman had resigned; it would take several more years before there was more than one woman on the team).
** In the original ''JusticeSocietyOfAmerica'' comic (predating the Justice League by decades), Wonder Woman was the only female character, and had to be the secretary and never took part in storylines, so JLA Wonder Woman actually came out ahead. That was in the 1940s however, and the reason she didn't take part in storylines was because she had her own book. As a rule the JSA active members were limited to popular characters who didn't support their own title, and even Franchise/{{Superman}} and Franchise/{{Batman}} were limited by it. The JSA did, eventually, get a female character: Black Canary. Huh. Pattern?
*** To offset this, ''Comicbook/{{Earth 2}}'', the 2012 modern reimagining of the JSA, has Hawkgirl as a founding member. Double points since she's not only a woman, but a [[TwoferTokenMinority Latina as well]].
** To add insult to injury, the JLA '''rejected''' a female member prior to letting Black Canary in: Hawkgirl was specifically disallowed, initially because the bylaws required they only let in one new member at a time, and they had just let in Comicbook/{{Hawkman}}. Later, she was kept out because her powers duplicated Hawkman's, so she brought nothing new to the table. Hawkman, of course, only has flight and scientific/detective skills ([[ContinuitySnarl usually]]), thus is made completely redundant by Superman and Batman, but nobody moved to kick Hawkman out on these grounds. Hawkgirl was finally allowed in in the 70s, when the writers caught up with the sexual revolution.
** While we are on the subject of Justice League, the fact that movies starring male superheroes are being greenlit left and right, and Wonder Woman's own film is ''still'' in DevelopmentHell, has not gone unnoticed. Considering the [[SarcasmMode runaway success]] of ''Film/{{Supergirl}}'', ''Film/BarbWire'', and ''Film/{{Catwoman}}'', it isn't exactly surprising. But that in itself is [[DoubleStandard a problem]] - a superhero movie that bombs is just that film's failure, but a superheroine movie that bombs makes movie execs fearful of ever making another one because they think that [[InsaneTrollLogic obviously superheroine movies don't make as much money]].
* In the first incarnation of the ''ComicBook/TeenTitans'' there wasn't even ''one''. They were looking for a [[TokenMinority token girl]] and they saw that a character called "WonderGirl" had already been published, so they decided to use her. Somehow they (not to mention their editors!) missed the fact that "Wonder Girl" was actually just Diana as a teenager for something like ''four or five years'' real time. She was finally given the first of way too many origin stories in an attempt to fix this mistake. [[ContinuitySnarl And thus began a grand and glorious tradition of no one having any idea who she is or where she came from.]]
* ''The ComicBook/DoomPatrol'' started with one woman, Elasti-Girl.
* Inverted in ''ComicBook/YTheLastMan'' where Yorick Brown spends most of the series as one of only two males (the other being his pet monkey) in a world full of women (most of whom try to kill him).
* Silk Spectre II from ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' is the only female super-hero of the second generation. Furthermore, her central importance to the plot is that of her role as a woman, being a kept-girlfriend to Dr. Manhattan and then the love interest of Nite Owl II. However, this is a {{deconstruction}}, so it may be intentional to demonstrate the usual roles female characters played in the comic book genre ten to twenty years before "Watchmen".
** The WWII era group originally had two females (Silk Spectre I and The Silhouette), but the latter was kicked out when it became known she was a lesbian. (As at least two males were known among the group to be closeted homosexuals, the commentary on sexism is definitely intentional.)
* ComicStrip/RupertBear had few female characters - Ottoline Otter (introduced about a couple of decades ago) and Tiger Lilly, not counting the mothers of the characters - and the main cast was mostly male. The CGI adaptation saw it fit to GenderFlip Ping Pong and Freida Fox.
* With the occasional exception of Xavin, ''Comicbook/{{Runaways}}'' inverts this by having, at most, 2 male characters in any team roster. Of those characters, only Victor has had superpowers constantly.
* ''ComicBook/OneHundredBullets'' has one female Minuteman (who is arguably TheChick), one powerful businesswoman with AbsoluteCleavage, and a lot of scantily-clad female walk-on characters. The rest of the cast is male.
* According to Norwegian Scholar Jon Gisle, the population of [[ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse Duckburg]] is about 80% male.
* In Comicbook/ScottPilgrim, one of Ramona's evil ex-boyfriends [[spoiler: is actually a girl. Justified by the fact Ramona is mostly heterosexual and only became bisexual during her "phase", so it's actually a surprise the group even includes a girl to begin with.]]
* {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in ''YoungbloodJudgmentDay'', where Glory is keen to the idea of re-forming the Allies of Justice because she enjoys being the only woman in a team of men -- it's implied that it makes her feel like she's the one in charge.
* Platinum was the only female member of the MetalMen. Tin later created Nameless, who didn't really do much other than act as his girlfriend. Right before the CerebusSyndrome {{Retool}}, [[TeamDad Doc Magnus]] created {{Distaff Counterpart}}s of the team, but they were one-off characters. In recent years, the team finally gained a bona-fide second female member, [[DeadpanSnarker Copper]].
** The Metal Men's ''schtick'' is that each has properties/abilities associated with their respective "metal". Nameless (who, like Tin, is made of ... well, ''tin'') had exactly the same powers as Tin (who was himself probably the weakest of the metal men), but Tin had more experience, so there usually wasn't much for Nameless to do.
* The newspaper comic ''Tumbleweeds'' had two Smurfettes -- Hildegarde Hamhocker among the townsfolk of Grimy Gulch, and Little Flower among the Poohawks. Aside from Hildegarde's little niece Echo, other female characters are extremely rare (if not non-existent) in the strip.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* In WaterMargin, there are 108 heroes of Liangshan Marsh, divided into 36 'heavenly heroes' and 72 'earthly heroes'. Only 3 of the earthly heroes are female, and none of the heavenly heroes are. Additionally, only one of the women survives the novel.
* Leah Clearwater in the ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' series is the sole female werewolf not only in her pack, but in HISTORY.
* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' series contained only one major female character for the first three books. DouglasAdams explained in an interview that he wasn't comfortable writing female characters because he didn't understand women. He made up for it in the third book by allowing Trillian (instead of Arthur, as he had originally planned) to make the deductive leaps that narrowly prevent a galaxy-wide war. Books four and five added Fenchurch and Random, respectively.
* It took ''456 pages'' to reach a female character in ''The Sword of {{Shannara}}''. [[LampshadeHanging Even her rescuer was VERY surprised]].
* In Creator/OrsonScottCard's ''Literature/EndersGame'', Petra is the only girl ever mentioned at the Battle School; when Ender is first recruited, it is mentioned that girls rarely pass the tests to get in. However, Ender's sister Valentine proves to be an important character. Later books in the series introduce more major female characters.
** Eventually, Petra winds up first a kinda-SatelliteLoveInterest and then a babymomma. To something like eight kids. And settles down with ''Peter'', of all people, since Bean had to go away into space with the mutant babies and you can't have a woman ''alone''. (Unless she's a nun. The nun was cool.) [[WriterOnBoard Be fruitful and multiply]] indeed.
* Creator/TamoraPierce has stated she writes stories with female leads precisely because of this. At the time she was starting the ''Circle of Magic'' series, she saw an article that mentioned that 75% of recently published fantasy books had male heroes, so she inverted the figure by having three girls and one boy as the main characters (a male character with stereotypically "girlie" [[GreenThumb plant-based magic]] at that).
** The teachers were two men and two women, though, and Sandry also had Duke Vedris.
** However, Pierce does have a roughly equal number of male and female secondary characters in almost all the books.
*** And sometimes they overshadow her girls, especially when she gets to the romance stage. Still, she does all right. In the Trickster books even the {{Love Interest|s}} didn't hold a candle to Ally for character-dominance. Of course, the relationship had a really odd progression. Starting with the fact that he's a ''crow.''
* Creator/TerryPratchett examples:
** The ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novels includes a ViolentGlaswegian version of ''TheSmurfs'', called the Nac Mac Feegle, or Pictsies. The Nac Mac Feegle, though humanoid, can be considered an extreme case of InsectGenderBender, in which the gender of the 'worker bees' is reversed. Their hundreds-to-one sex ratio is explained in that the females are rarely born, but are "Queen Bees" (Keldas) who rule over their sprawling, brawling sons, brothers-in-law, and husband. Keldas may, when fully grown, be larger than the males of the species (Big Aggie of the Long Lake Clan, for example).
** The ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' Watch books feature only two non-dwarf female Watchmen. They're even [[TwoferTokenMinority Twofer Token Minorities]] (one is a [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent werewolf]], the other a [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampire]]). There ARE other female Watch Officers- a Constable Jolson may have been vaguely referred to as 'she'- but they don't get screen time.
*** Leave us not forget Corporal Cheeri Littlebottom, the unfortunately-named one-dwarf forensics department of the Watch. Of course, it's not obvious that she ''is'' a she until the end of the book in which she's introduced, but that's par for the course for Discworld dwarves. Littlebottom later starts a sort of feminist movement for female dwarves by making it obvious that she is female, which is apparently a serious taboo for dwarves.
** Subverted with a vengeance in ''[[spoiler:Discworld/MonstrousRegiment]]'', of course.
** Kirsty from the ''JohnnyMaxwellTrilogy'' is the only girl, but does not accept her status, going so far as to call the others 'four token boys'.
** ''Only You Can Save Mankind'' inverts this trope: the Gunnery Officer on the [=ScreeWee=] ship is the token male on a ship crewed by females.
** And of course, who could forget Pepper from ''Good Omens'', the only girl in The Them.
*** Well, she's a GenderFlip of Ginger in the Just William books. So at least the ladies are making inroads.
* ''Literature/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'' averts this to the extent that it seems deliberate. The Baudelaires are one male, two female; their counterparts the Quagmires are one female, two male. Count Olaf's theater troupe contains two men, two women and "a person who [[AmbiguousGender looks neither like a man nor a woman]]".
* R.A. Salvatore's ''Literature/TheIcewindDaleTrilogy'' series (of the TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms) originally did not have any major female characters. But soon he learned that [[ExecutiveMeddling further books of his would be rejected if he didn't add one]]. And thus Catti-Brie was given the literary equivalent of PromotionToOpeningTitles.
* In the TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms stories starring [[LadyOfWar half-elf warrior Arilyn Moonblade]] and human mage Danilo Thann by Elaine Cunningham, aside from Arilyn herself, it seems like ''every single female character'' winds up WomenInRefrigerators at some point. Aside from the BigBad of the week, the males survive and get larger roles (including Danilo, as well as fan favorites Elaith, Foxfire, etc.) [[MostGamersAreMale Considering the tabletop RPG market]], this may be due to ExecutiveMeddling.
* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' features very few women. The actual Fellowship is completely male, and the only female character to take an active role in the sprawling thousand-page plot is Eowyn. Galadriel is powerful and important, but mostly "offscreen". Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, Mrs Maggott, Goldberry, Ioreth, Mrs Cotton, and Rose Cotton are trivial. Arwen barely has a speaking part. Everyone else is male.
** Tolkien does point out that her people have a tradition of warrior women. Peter Jackson's films are actually much better examples of the Smurfette principle than the books.
** Tolkien also mentions that there is only one known dwarf woman in history - Fili and Kili's mother (who is briefly mentioned in ''Literature/TheHobbit'').
* ''LightNovel/FateZero'' has a bit of this with Saber, [[spoiler:a GenderBender version of a traditionally male character to start with]] and the only female amongst individual servants. It repeats again with the Assassins with one female and three males on the team.
* In ''Literature/GoodOmens,'' [[{{Tomboy}} Pepper]] and [[LadyOfWar War]] are the only girls in their respective groups (a gang of children for Pepper, the HorsemenOfTheApocalypse for War). There are, however, several other female characters in the story.
* Beverly Marsh is the only female in The Losers Club in ''Literature/{{IT}}''. [[DeconstructedTrope This has its]] [[{{Squick}} consequences later]].
* From 72 demons featured in ''Literature/ArsGoetia'', only Marchosias, Vepar, and Gremory are female. And that's only from their usual forms on manifestation (respectively: [[MixAndMatchCritters gryphon-winged, snake-tailed she-wolf]]; mermaid; camel-riding noblewoman); the text itself still uses male pronouns for all the demons. Marchosias, Vepar, and Gremory included.
* The only female disciple of Aldur in ''Literature/{{Belgariad}}'' is Polgara. Well, also Poledra, but she's a MissingMom most of the time. And these women are Belgarath's wife and daughter, so apparently to be a female member of the group [[NeverASelfMadeWoman you have to have a connection to a male member of the group]]. Although Poledra was called in her own right, and had been around for several centuries as a wolf before taking a human form and name and marrying Belgarath.
* Creator/IsaacAsimov, until he married his second wife had issues with women due to relations with [[MyBelovedSmother his beloved Smother]]. Susan Calvin was the shining exception in the 400+ books he wrote until he was old.
* ''Literature/OfMiceAndMen'': There are a total of eleven characters mentioned in any capacity in the book. Two are women. One, Lennie's Aunt Clara, deceased, is never seen and is only a part of Lennie's background. The other, Curley's wife, doesn't get a name. [[spoiler: And she dies anyway]].
* [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Shub-Niggurath]] is the Smurfette of the Creator/HPLovecraft canon, being the only ''Great Old One'' referred to as a female in his works.
* The [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Mythos]] also has [[GenerationXerox Cthylla]], who is the only "daughter" of Cthulhu's offspring.
* A subtler version is at play in Zamyatin's ''Literature/{{We}}'': everyone in the society is issued with an alphanumeric designation instead of a name, with one letter followed by several numbers. Men get consonants; women get vowels. Note the ratio.
** Except in Russia, the ratio is about 2:1 - 10 vowels, 20 consonants, so it's not as extreme.
* In Sharon Creech's ''The Wanderer'', Sophie is the only girl among the surly crew of the titular sailboat, made up of her three uncles and two (male) cousins. And they didn't even want to take her in the first place. Their main reasoning was "wouldn't you rather stay at land, where you can take shower every day?".
* Literature/LightAndDarkTheAwakeningOfTheMageknight: For a long time Sabrina was the only prominent female character other than Danny's mom. When she left the group, she was promptly replaced by Briza. Also, there is precisely one female among the White Rock Academy Instructors.

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* In ''Series/{{Smallville}}'', the earliest version of the Justice League includes [[Franchise/{{Superman}} Clark]], ComicBook/{{Aquaman}}[=/=]Author, Cyborg/Victor, [[TheFlash Impulse]]/Bart, GreenArrow/Oliver, and Chloe. This defies some common expectations however, as she is TheSmartGirl and is, at that time, romantically involved with someone outside the group.
* ''Series/MythBusters'' generally has Kari Byron as the token female. This hasn't always been the case, however; Mythterns Christine and Jess often added a second female to the group, and the earlier episodes with the Build Team had Scottie Chapman as the third member after Kari and Tory; Grant only came on board after Scottie left the show.
* Almost all {{Panel Game}}s contain one, or no, women.
** Only two episodes of ''Series/{{QI}}'', the Domesticity episode and the Girls and Boys episode, have featured two females on the same panel; this was lampshaded in the latter, which included a question on why there weren't more women as guests on the show (the excuse was that test audiences laugh less at female comedians). Out of approximately 87 different guests over 9 series, 21 of them have been female, and only 7 of those have made more than one appearance. Historically, Jo Brand has pretty clearly served the role of the token female, having appeared 27 times as of series I (the most appearances of any guest panelist, tied with Sean Lock). Sandi Toksvig, however, started appearing in at least two episodes a year as early as series G, and Sue Perkins has also started to appear more regularly (twice in series I, and will appear in three episodes in series J), making them the {{Affirmative Action Girl}}s of the show.
*** Seems to have been changed for "J" series - "Jack and Jill" had two women and "Jam, Jelly and Juice" had an unprecedented female ''majority'' -- Jo Brand, Sue Perkins and Liza Tarbuck.
** ''Series/MockTheWeek'' has never featured more than one female comedian on the same panel; out of 51 guests to appear on the show, 16 have been women.
** ''ToTellTheTruth'' often averted this, with a 50/50 split of the 4 panelists. The guests on the show are a trio, all imitating the same person, but have been both females and males.
** Almost always averted in ''Series/MatchGame'' (at least the 70's versions). Brett Somers was nearly always the top middle spot, and there were usually two women (with Richard Dawson in the middle) on the bottom tier.
* [[InvertedTrope Reversed]] in ''Series/DesigningWomen'': Anthony was not only the token male, but also the TokenMinority, making him a TwoferTokenMinority.
** Depending on who you speak to, some consider him almost a Threefer Token Minority, since it seems like there's significant evidence in the series to suggest he might also be gay.
* Virtually every seasonal roster of ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' consists of three guys and {{two girls|ToATeam}}. That is, until the invariably male SixthRanger showed up. A few seasons instead start with a PowerTrio of two guys and one girl, and are then joined by multiple (still invariably male) extra rangers. ''Franchise/SuperSentai'' is sometimes worse, with a FiveManBand of four guys and one girl; in those cases ''Power Rangers'' uses ShesAManInJapan to improve the gender balance.
** Neither show ever had a female character in Red until ''Series/PowerRangersSPD'''s Charlie, but she was fighting for the villains. The first heroic female Red Ranger appeared in ''Series/SamuraiSentaiShinkenger''/''Series/PowerRangersSamurai'' (and even then, she got minimal screentime/development/relevancy/etc).
** Also, ''Franchise/SuperSentai'' often has one female major villain. She is usually a comic relief character. This is less prevalent in ''Franchise/PowerRangers'', which usually makes female villains TheDragon or even the BigBad.
** ''Series/{{Engine Sentai Go-Onger}}'', for once, had one of the extra rangers as a female with actual screentime. The ratio of the Go-onger team was still 5:2, but at least they made an effort. ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'', sadly, took this a step backward; Gold and Silver became SingleMindedTwins, so the girl basically amounted to half a character. Though it did make up for it by having the mentor character be female and get plenty of focus.
** Enforced in ''Series/ZyudenSentaiKyoryuger'', as WordOfGod stated that since becoming a Kyoryuger involves a test of strength (defeating a dinosaur in a fight), it made sense to them that only one girl would make the team. This has caused a lot of ValuesDissonance in the West.
** In the toylines, [[GirlShowGhetto the female Rangers usually get basic action figures produced and that's it]], while the boys get EnvironmentSpecificActionFigure variations out the wazoo. With the ''[[Series/PowerRangersJungleFury Jungle Fury]]'' and ''RPM'' toys, Bandai America has actually ''created extra marketable'' (read: male) ''Rangers for the toyline'' to give these extras to, rather than give them to the existing female Rangers. Then again, that's less misogyny and more because girls don't sell: young boys really ''are'' the primary consumers of action figures for fighting series, and in second and third grade, owning a Pink Ranger "doll" can be hazardous to your health.
*** Some series have made non-Yellow females a Blue or White Ranger rather than Pink, so that even if little boys don't want her action figure (because the costume will usually have a skirt on it) they can still be persuaded to buy other merchandise based on the character - her weapons, mecha, etc.
* The only major female Muppet is Miss Piggy, a glamourous diva. When she was first introduced, she was a minor character. The large cast of ''Series/TheMuppetShow'' is male-dominant, but this may be due to its slapstick nature (Miss Piggy, for example, rarely takes any of the slapstick, but she certainly dishes it out when provoked). Furthermore, the regular cast used to include other female characters, such as Janice and Hilda, but both became much less prominent after Hilda's puppeteer quit and Janice's puppeteer died, leaving Piggy. Janice herself rarely appeared outside of her FiveManBand (The Electric Mayhem), of which she was TheChick.
** There have been a few other female Muppets, but their tenure is either short-lived; or they're one-off characters. A notable example is Annie-Sue Pig; a young ingénue and foil to Miss Piggy. Her appearances declined considerably after the 3rd season, although she did still appear from time to time. A number of the [[AmbiguousGender ambiguously-gendered]] monsters are noted in background material as being female; but there is no clear indication of this on the show.
*** This applies to the puppeteers as well; in the first season, there were seven puppeteers, and only one (Eren Ozker) was a woman. Ozker & John Lovelady left after Season 1, so they held auditions for a new female for Season 2, with Louise Gold getting the part (although she was uncredited for the season). In Season 3, they hired another female puppeteer (Kathryn Mullen) but also hired another male (Steve Whitmire) making it 6 guys, 2 girls. Also, in relation to Miss Piggy & Janice, they were (and still are) performed by males. Yeah.
** ''Series/SesameStreet'', on the other hand, has an almost evenly split human cast, but for a period had almost no female Muppets. Even now, there's only a few significant ones, such as the mild-mannered Prairie Dawn (and Betty Lou, who was actually the same Muppet), Snuffy's little sister Alice, and the more recent characters of fun-loving Zoe, earthy Rosita, and girlie-girl Abby Cadabby.
** The spinoff ''WesternAnimation/MuppetBabies'' added Skeeter, Scooter's [[HalfIdenticalTwins "identical" twin]], to balance the sexes.
** ''Series/FraggleRock'' has a fairly even gender balance, with over seven reoccurring Muppet female characters, of which five are regulars: ActionGirl Red, CoolBigSis Mokey, levelheaded Ma Gorg, ShortTank Cotterpin, and wise Trash Heap. Furthermore, the series has an excellent age balance as well, with {{Cool Old Guy}}s like Doc, Cantus, Architect Doozer, The World's Oldest Fraggle, and the female Storyteller and aforementioned Trash Heap. That's not even getting into the species diversity!
** ''Series/BearInTheBigBlueHouse'' had Ojo as the only female in the main cast.
* ''Series/StargateSG1'' suffers from this: Samantha Carter is the only woman on the team (although there is a very prominent female doctor who eventually ends up [[spoiler:getting KilledOffForReal]]). Can be justified by the fact that, even in modern times, the military is hardly the most gender equitable of places. Due to ExecutiveMeddling, a sexy female thief gets added to the team in the final two seasons. ''[[Series/StargateAtlantis Atlantis]]'' is a lot better at balancing out the roles.
* {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d on ''Series/ThirdRockFromTheSun'', where the aliens, having learned their ideas about Earth from its popular culture, decided that only one of them needed to be "[[TheChick The Woman]]".
* {{Justified|Trope}} on ''Series/{{Mash}}'', given it's set in a military installation and most surgeons at the time were male. Only one, Margaret Houlihan, maintained a major role at all times (and not as TheChick), with a number of other recurring and once-off nurses (most notably, Kellye Nakahara/Yamoto, Ginger Bayliss, Janet Baker, Nurses Baker, Shari, Jo Ann, Bigelow, and Able) typically playing the role of TheChick where necessary. Gender issues were explored in the show -- most notably when a male nurse is the victim of gender discrimination, having been made a private when all the other (female) nurses were commissioned officers.
* ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'' featured almost no women, but then again most of the roles were played by the same six actors anyway, regardless of gender. By their own admission, the Pythons brought in women like "[[SixthRanger Seventh Python]]" Carol Cleveland only when they needed a female character to actually be attractive, otherwise, they'd just get into drag.
** Both Python precursor series, ''Do Not Adjust Your Set'' and ''At Last the 1948 Show'', featured five person casts consisting of four men and one woman.
* Possibly lampshaded during the fourth season of ''Series/{{House}}'': The title character has two slots for doctors to work under him, and four prospects, two of each gender. He [[spoiler:kicks one of the women out, and tells the other, nicknamed "13", that he'd hire her if he had a slot]]. Later, his boss, Lisa Cuddy, informs him that he has to [[spoiler:hire at least one woman, and tells him to hire 13]]. Cuddy starts to walk away, then realizes that she had just [[spoiler:[[BatmanGambit given him exactly what he wanted]].]]
* On ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', Uhura was a [[TwoferTokenMinority Token Twofer]] who was also relegated to the position of space phone operator. ''[[FairForItsDay For the time]]'', she was rather progressive, but...
** This was due to ExecutiveMeddling. The original pilot had a female ''second-in-command''. The network couldn't fire her fast enough (even if she managed to sneak back on set anyway in a blonde wig and a nurse's outfit).
*** The network might also have resented the fact that she was Creator/GeneRoddenberry's [[CastingCouch girlfriend]].
*** According to Creator/WilliamShatner at least, ''women'' in the test audiences found the female second-in-command "pushy" and "annoying". Maybe [[TheWorldIsNotReady The World Was Not Ready]]...
**** It's also been said that Creator/{{NBC}} gave Roddenberry a somewhat SadisticChoice: either keep the female second-in-command or keep Spock, but not both. Years later, Majel Barrett would quip that he "kept the Vulcan and married the woman, 'cause he didn't think Creator/{{Leonard|Nimoy}} would have it the other way around."
** For a world with supposed complete gender equality, this applies to most ''Trek'' series. ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' started with three women - after the security chief died, all that were left were in rather stereotypically feminine roles as the doctor and counselor. Recurring females were Keiko (botanist), Ogawa (nurse), Ro Laren and Guinan. Only the latter two were of any real importance, and the first eventually settled into the role of O'Brien's wife.
** Much improved in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' which had a female first officer (Kira) and female science officer (Dax), though the number of women was still in the minority. Unfortunately, however, the science officer role was not [[spoiler:replaced after Jadzia Dax's death - the new Ezri Dax]] was another counselor.
** Further improved in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', with Captain Janeway (who later became admiral), Main Engineer TwoferTokenMinority Torres (who was Klingon, female and half Hispanic), and little girl-who-evolves-into-god Kes, who was later replaced by science "Überbabe" Seven of Nine. The main villain for the first two series turned out to be Seska, a manipulative Cardassian spy, and the surprisingly non-annoying child character was Naomi (her mom, originally a RecurringCharacter before falling OutOfFocus despite her daughter remaining prominent, was a scientist).
** ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' had a female first officer/science officer (T'Pol), and a female comm officer/linguist (Hoshi).
** Interestingly [[EqualOpportunityEvil villains don't suffer this problem]]: ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' had the Female Shapeshifter, and Kai Winn as [[BigBad Big Bads]] and the Dominion has plenty of female Vortas. The Borg equally have plenty of female drones and are led by the Queen. In ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' there was Planet Angel 1, led by women and Tasha Yar's home planet, complete with Tasha's sister.
*** And who could forget the Duras sisters, aka ''The Magnificent Four.''
* ''ChouseishinGransazer'' has twelve Gransazers (transforming superheroes), divided into four "tribes", each consisting of two guys and a girl. The two guys of each tribe can be quite clearly categorized as an "alpha male" and a "beta male". The girl is invariably TheChick. Ai of the Water Tribe is the chickiest of the four, though. (Her name means "love". It doesn't get any more cheesy and girly than that.)
* The FiveManBand in ''Series/CaptainPowerAndTheSoldiersOfTheFuture'' included Captain Power, Hawk, Tank, and Scout, all male. Sometime before the start of the show, they rescued Jennifer "Pilot" Chase from the Dread Youth. She was an awkward mix of skills and talents: she was on par with Power and Scout in combat and infiltration, but the former could easily (and often did) replace her at the helm of the Jumpship, and most of the time she was there only to be TheChick. Worse, at the end of its [[CutShort only season]], she was KilledOffForReal in a HeroicSacrifice. Leaked scripts for a proposed Season 2 would have brought in a more [[ActionGirl Amazonian]] replacement.
* ''Franchise/KamenRider'' has always been quite the wiener party, with female Riders being few and far in between. ''KamenRiderRyuki'' introduced the first official female Rider. Her title was "Kamen Rider Femme". Go figure. ("Femme" is French for "woman"...) She only appears in a movie, thus being non-canon. Oh, and she [[spoiler:dies after like 30 minutes]], but not before [[spoiler:killing the most evil Kamen Rider apparently.]]
** ''Ryuki'''s Western Adaptation ''KamenRiderDragonKnight'' expanded the role of Femme's counterpart Kamen Rider Siren with original footage, (''much'' original footage) making her a SixthRanger and forming a PowerTrio with the two male leads. She's still the only girl out of thirteen Riders, but points for doing what they could.
** Furthering the point on the rare female Kamen Riders, Shuki from ''KamenRiderHibiki'' was the first female Rider to be in a TV series rather than a movie-only character. The tragic ExecutiveMeddling that ruined the show in an attempt to make it more like other ''Kamen Rider'' series [[spoiler:killed her off.]]
** On a few occasions, women have "borrowed" Rider powers (including KamenRiderFaiz, [[KamenRiderKiva IXA]], and the ''KamenRiderDecade'' incarnation of [[Series/KamenRiderDenO Den-O]]), but this is always temporary.
** Preceding all of them was Electro-Wave Human Tackle (yes, that was her name) from ''KamenRiderStronger'', who had all the qualifications to be considered a Rider, but wasn't. [[FromBadToWorse It Gets Worse]]: [[spoiler: Her eventual death was quite tragic at the time, but gets HarsherInHindsight: in light of the fate of all female Riders ''since'' her, it now just seems like the strict "StayInTheKitchen or get StuffedIntoTheFridge" law of the series got an early start]]. The manga ''KamenRiderSPIRITS'' addresses her non-Rider status by saying that [[spoiler:following her HeroicSacrifice, Shigeru/Stronger wanted her to rest in peace as a normal woman. A lot of fans cry shenanigans at this even more - as someone who JumpedAtTheCall and really wanted to do good, she would ''not'' want to be remembered as just some girl.]]
** ''KamenRiderDecade'' tries to redress some of the issue by having Natsumi temporarily become [[Series/KamenRiderDenO Den-O]] and later [[spoiler:becoming Kamen Rider Kivala in the GrandFinale movie (Keyword: "Finale". Go figure.) and '''not''' dying, unlike the previous female Riders]] as well as giving ''[[KamenRiderHibiki Hibiki's]]'' Akira full-fledged powers as Kamen Rider Amaki (in ''Hibiki'', she only ever assumed a middle-stage transformation). Tackle appears in the finale movie [[spoiler: and turns out to be a ghost, but the character is treated with much more respect than history would lead you to expect, nonetheless]]. ''Blade'''s movie-only short-lived girl Rider also gets a happier ending as well. Alas, it can't be extended to Femme, who only appears briefly as one of the not-actually-a-person Rider duplicates created from Kamen Ride cards as a distraction. Still, Decade treats female Riders better than the entire rest of the franchise put together. However, after forty years, we're ''still'' waiting for a female Rider to be treated as well as the worst-treated token girl Ranger in ''Sentai'' or ''Franchise/PowerRangers.'' ("Treated" in terms of screentime, being able to hold one's own, and [[StuffedInTheFridge not dying]]. Tackle got screentime but mostly got beaten up and captured. Then she died. The movie-only girl riders appeared once in non-canon installments. Then they died. The one-shot borrowers can measure their Rider "careers" in ''seconds'' and counting them as Riders really doesn't ring true.) You know it's bad when you have to ''work your way up to being as good on this score'' as any straight example of the Smurfette Principle on the page.
** ''Series/KamenRiderFourze'' gets a DistaffCounterpart, Kamen Rider Nadeshiko, in ''Movie Wars Megamax''; only for her to go and AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence at the end. [[spoiler:But we ''finally'' get a subversion when she actually comes back, in the next year's installment ''Movie Wars Ultimatum''.]]
* Both the U.K. and U.S. versions of ''Series/WhoseLineIsItAnyway'' feature four players, all of whom are almost always male. Only one episode in 18 series featured one male and three female performers. This is not helped by both Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles appearing in every episode of the last 11 series, meaning the best the women could achieve was parity with the male performers.
** Lampshaded in one episode during a game of ''Scenes From A Hat'' in which the scene was "Bad Times to Kiss Someone". Since all the players were male, when the game ended, Colin Mochrie asked if they could get some women on the show.
** This is a common issue on similarly structured comedy shows. The most {{egregious}} offender is probably ''MockTheWeek'', since all four recurring panelists (out of six) are male and the host is as well.
*** In fairness, there is a paucity of female comedians already, so it's not necessarily the fault of the people who make the programmes.
* Reversed in ''Series/SexAndTheCity'' which had no male characters ''at all'' in the main cast; even Big and Steve (the two most frequent recurring characters) appeared in rather less than half the episodes of the series. Carrie's friend Stanford, the next most frequent, showed up in less than a third of the episodes.
* ''Series/TheDailyShow'' rarely has more than one female regular at a time, if that. Currently, the only female correspondents are regular Samantha Bee and the very irregularly recurring Kristen Schaal. Rather curious, considering that the show was created by Madeline Smithberg and Lizz Winstead.
** The show's spotty record with women correspondents was {{lampshade|Hanging}}d when Kristen Schaal took over the show and declared Jon Stewart to be the new Senior Men's Correspondent: "Feel free to talk about men's issues. But don't expect to be on the show more than every four to twelve weeks or so."
*** OliviaMunn has appeared multiple times, which may make her the third regular female correspondent.
**** The show has since recruited Jessica Jones, so the situation is improving ''slightly''...
* Averted and inspected in ''RescueMe''. Janet Gavin and other women are major characters, and the presence of ''one'' woman in the firehouse warranted an entire subplot.
* The sitcom ''Series/{{Taxi}}'' only had Elaine Nardo, until late in the show's run Simka became a semi-regular.
* The main trio of ''Series/BeingHuman'' had Annie as the only female with Mitchell and George. There were a couple of secondary female characters, specifically Lauren, Nina, and Janie.
** Although, as of now, this has been reversed. Nina has become a principal cast member and now that [[spoiler:AidanTurner has left the show]] the ratio is now two women to one man.
** Nope. It ''looked'' like it was going to turn out that way at the end of series 3, but what with [[spoiler: Nina and George both getting killed off and replaced by two male characters]], the formula ultimately remains the same. In the show's defense, it's not ''that'' bad to only have one major female character when there are only three protagonists in total.
* ''BigWolfOnCampus'' had Stacy for Season 1, who basically served to be Tommy's love interest and DamselInDistress, getting kidnapped by various monsters of the week. She left and was replaced by Lori who was much more active in the monster fighting escapades. The show also used a number of female villains (or at least villains in the sense that they introduced conflict, some weren't evil), though mostly they were used for supernatural girlfriend plots.
* In ''Series/{{Angel}}'', Cordelia is the only female main character for the first 2 seasons and Fred/Illyria (and while Illyria is in Fred's body, she likely has NoBiologicalSex anyway) is the only one for most of the fifth season before Harmony was thrown in the last few episodes. Note that this is basically the inverse of the show it spun off from, ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''.
* ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' started off with two females (Elliot and Carla) out of a cast of six--later seven once [[AlmightyJanitor The Janitor]] was PromotedToOpeningTitles. Laverne started off as the only recurring female character until formerly one-shot Jordan became an AscendedExtra, but then [[spoiler: Laverne was KilledOffForReal in Season 6]]. Season 8 averted this, adding three recurring female doctors (Sunny, Katie, Denise) and two recurring non-meds in The Gooch and Lady, but [[ReTool the last season]] only had two female mains and one recurring, who only served [[FunnyAccent two]] [[MsFanservice purposes]]. There were several female guest stars throughout the series, but the vast majority were just [[GirlOfTheWeek girls of the week]] for J.D.
* An interesting case is the BBC's ''Series/RobinHood''. For the first four episodes, Marian was the only female character, not so much because of The Smurfette Principle, but simply because there was no other reoccurring female character in the legends. This was solved with the introduction of Djaq, a SweetPollyOliver in the {{Gender Flip}}ped role of the Saracen, who contributed her skills as a physician and scientist to the team. However, both Marian and Djaq were written out of the show at the end of Season 2, and replaced with [[AffirmativeActionGirl Isabella and Kate]]. Although Isabella had an important part to play in the narrative, the [[CreatorsPet widely-hated]] Kate was simply the Token Girl amongst the outlaws, a task that involved [[SatelliteLoveInterest fan-girling Robin]], [[DamselScrappy getting kidnapped every week]], and [[TheLoad being a useless tag-along]]. UnfortunateImplications abounded.
* ''Series/HumanTarget'' will be adding a female character in its second season. The main characters are all guys. Please welcome this trope.
* ''Series/HomicideLifeOnTheStreet'' began with only one woman, Detective Howard, in the main cast. That was a deliberate decision to reflect real-life homicide squads which were dominated by men. More women were added later on, and the show tried valiantly to avoid FanService by casting actresses who looked normal (by TV standards).
* ''Series/HawaiiFive0'' has Kono {{Gender Flip}}ped in order to have a girl among the lead characters.
* ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' has five main characters: the four male nerds, and TheChick who lives across the hall.
** However, in seasons 1 and 2, there was often Leslie Winkle acting as a female SixthRanger. As of Season 4, the odds have improved considerably, with Bernadette and Amy both being upgraded to main cast status for all the episodes they appear in. They still have a ways to go though: the two don't appear in every episode. Priya is also a major character, and mothers of the main characters (particularly Howard and Raj) are frequently involved.
* ''Series/RedDwarf'' had an all-male main cast for Series I, II and VI, but Holly had a sex change for Series III, IV and V, while Kochanski was the only main female for most of VII and VIII (Holly reverted to male). For part of ''Back to Earth'', the hologram Katerina takes up the female role, [[spoiler:Kochanski being assumed dead]].
* Pick an [[AmericanIdol Idol]] jury. Pick any [[AmericanIdol Idol]] jury.
** They added Kara [=DioGaurdi=] in the eighth season, making it two male judges and two female judges. When Paula Abdul left before Season 9 she was replaced by Ellen [=DeGeneres=]. Beginning with Season 10 it's back two male judges (Randy Jackson and Steven Tyler) and one female judge (Jennifer Lopez).
** OK, so pick any jury on any other talent show. So You Think You Can Dance: 2 men, 1 woman. America's Got Talent: 2 men, 1 woman. The Sing-Off: 2 men, 1 woman. The Voice: ''3'' men, 1 woman.
* Lampshaded in ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia''. In "The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis." The gang are trying to figure out their roles within the group and summarise that Mac's the brains, Dennis is the looks, Frank's the muscle, Charlie's the wild card, and Dee's the useless chick.
* The ''Franchise/LawAndOrder'' universe is always a bit prone to this:
** On [[FanNickname The Mother Ship]], the lack of female characters lead to one of the most positive examples of ExecutiveMeddling ever, giving us [[BenevolentBoss Anita Van Buren]] and [[HelloAttorney Claire Kincaid]]. Ever since, there have been two women (Van Buren and Jack [=McCoy=]'s current HelloAttorney ADA), apart from the single season in which Nina Cassidy was a detective. She was known as Detective Beauty Queen.
** On ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'', Olivia Benson is very noticeably the only female detective, which, in a squad which deals with rape victims daily, seems somewhat impractical. This was diluted as the show continued, as the ADA was invariably female, and Melinda Warner was given a PromotionToOpeningTitles, but it's still pretty glaring.
*** No she isn't. She is the only female detective in the main cast, except for Jefferies in Season 1 and now Rawlins in Season 13, but it is never said or even implied that she is the only female detective in the unit. Unnamed female detectives can be seen in the background. The ADA is also almost always a woman.
** On the other hand, ''Series/LawAndOrderCriminalIntent'' is always very good about having one male and one female partner. For maximum [[UnresolvedSexualTension UST]].
** Both leads on ''Series/LawAndOrderTrialByJury'' were female. And the LesYay ran rampant.
** ''Series/LawAndOrderLA'' had a male dominated police force, though their Captain was a female. While the prosecutors rotated a bit during the season, only the ADA's assistant was ever female, exemplifying this trope in spades.
* Amanda Keller is the only female cast member on the Australian panel/game show ''TalkinBoutYourGeneration'', not counting female guest stars.
* ''Series/{{NCIS}}'' stars a set of four investigators, only one of which is female at any one time.
** They do have Abby, a lab tech who is one of three characters who has been in every episode (the other two being Gibbs and Dinozzo).
* ''Series/TheXFiles'': for five seasons, Scully is the only female FBI agent ever seen. After that, female FBI agents are seen only sparingly (Daina Fowley, Leyla Harrison) until Monica Reyes replaces Scully on the X-Files. Scully makes reference to the hardships of working in a male-dominated profession at various points throughout the series.
* Out of the four leads on ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'', only one (Elaine) is a woman, and she was [[SixthRanger a late addition to the cast.]] All four do get roughly equal screen time, though.
* Inverted on ''Series/TheLWord'' where the vast majority of the ([[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters very large]]) EnsembleCast is female and there are only ever one or two major male characters at any time.
* Constantly played straight and averted in ''Series/DoctorWho'', thanks to the ever changing nature of the show. Because the Doctor is male (although, he could [[TheNthDoctor regenerate]] into a girl, theoretically) writers tend to balance him out by having a female companion. Extra companions will occasionally be brought on, but their gender in completely random. Examples of multi-companion crews have been:
** First Doctor; 50/50 for the first while. There was the Doctor and Ian, plus Barbara and Susan.
** Second Doctor had for a while 2 boys (the Doctor and Jamie) plus one girl, Zoe. Another girl, Victoria, occasionally joined them.
** The third Doctor was a bit of an odd case. Set on Earth, in a male dominated military organisation, there were mostly guys around. Main cast members, however, were the Doctor, TheBrigadier, Harry Sullivan, and Sergent Benton, with Sarah-Jane Smith, Dr. Liz Shaw and Jo filling in the female roles.
** Fourth Doctor companions were Sarah Jane Smith, fellow Time Lady Romana, Leela, Tegan the air-hostess, with the guys being [[TheScrappy Adric]] and the robot-dog K9.
** The Fifth Doctor again had a string of mostly female companions, such as Peri and Tegan. There were guys, however, such as Adric, Turlough and the robot Kamelion.
** The Seventh's Doctor only permanent companion was Ace.
** For the majority of Nine's run Rose Tyler was the only companion, although the very popular Captain Jack Harkness came on near the end. By the end of the Russel T. Davies era all the companions from the period came back, including Martha Jones, Donna Noble, Sarah Jane Smith and Jackie Tyler for the girls, with the guys including Jack and Mickey.
** The Eleventh's Team TARDIS could be considered 50/50, so far: You've got the Doctor and Rory, but also Amy and River.
* ''Series/MissionImpossible'' (both the original and revival) never had more than one female regular at a time (though missions could and did have more than one female agent involved) - the original had Cinnamon in the first three seasons, then a revolving door of replacements in season four, Dana in season five, and then Casey for the final two seasons; in the revival Casey came first, and she was replaced by Shannon.
* Two episodes of the original ''Series/TheOuterLimits'', "The Chameleon" and "The Invisible Enemy", have all-male casts.
* ''Series/{{Monk}}'' has a 3:1 ratio, due to there being three main male characters (Monk, Captain Stottlemeyer, Lieutenant Disher) and one female lead role (Sharona for seasons 1-3, Natalie seasons 3-8).
* The sketch comedy series ''Series/MrShow'' was pretty bad about this, as roles in which gender wasn't a factor was rarely written for females (the leads were usually played by Bob Odenkirk and/or David Cross). The only regular female cast member in all the seasons was Jill Talley and the show alternated between other female cast members (Mary Lynn Rajskub, Brett Paesel, Karen Kilgariff, SarahSilverman, Becky Thyre) through out the show's run.

[[folder:Music]]
* Unlike other genres, it is still rare for a hip-hop label to have more than one female rapper at the same time, especially for solo acts. These women generally wind up falling into two roles: hyper-sexualized [[MsFanservice Ms. Fanservices]] (TropeCodifier Music/LilKim, Music/NickiMinaj, Trina, Shawnna, and Olivia for Bad Boy Entertainment, YMCMB, Slip-n-Slide, Disturbing tha Peace, and G-Unit, respectively) or projecting a less sexual OneOfTheBoys image (TropeCodifier MC Lyte, Lady of Rage, Yo-Yo and Da Brat for First Priority, Death Row, Lench Mob and So So Def, respectively). Post-Lil Kim, the former category has become more prominent, though, since the late 90s, more female emcees have found a happy medium between emphasizing their vocal prowess ''and'' sexual expression (former Flipmode artist Rah Digga and Eve, from Ruff Ryders). The one-girl-to-a-team rule has notably been averted by Murder Inc. (who featured Charli Baltimore, Lil' Mo and Vita), and Def Jam which, for a short period during the 2000s hosted Foxy Brown, Lady Sovereign, Unladylike, Shareefa, and Shawnna, simultaneously.
* In Music/TheProtomen's ''VideoGame/MegaMan'' RockOpera (also known as ''The Protomen''), Dr. Light's girlfriend Emily is the only female character to have lines.
* Rock bands are mostly all men, or have just one female member, who is usually the lead singer. Or the bass player.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Mythology]]
* Of all the gods and goddesses in the Roman pantheon, UsefulNotes/{{Venus}} was the only one to have a planet named after her.
** It wasn't always like this. Originally, the six planets were Sun/Sol (male), Moon/Luna (female), Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Two out of six isn't that bad. After Sun and Moon were removed, the next planet that was discovered was named Ceres, also female. So for a short time two of five planets were female. Ceres was later demoted into an asteroid, just like Pluto a few years ago.
** It's worth noting that many pantheons that assign a gender to the Earth itself make it female, including the Roman Terra, which is occasionally used as the "proper" name of Earth.
[[/folder]]