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1This scale examines how the relationships between men and women are portrayed in fiction. The common positions on the scale vary by culture in time, distance, and medium.
2
3True equality, which is near the center of the scale, is rare. The edges are taken by positions where the opposite sex doesn't exist or exists in only a contemptible form. Note that Level 1 is not the exact reverse of Level 9, as there are far fewer works in which the writer simply fails to include male characters, or in which a setting is intentionally created as a female-free paradise.
4
5The extreme levels are a SubTrope of ChromosomeCasting. Barring the middle, some measure of GenderIncompetence might be featured. See also UsefulNotes/TheBechdelTest.
6----
7[[foldercontrol]]
8
9!Level 1: There Are No Women
10There are no female characters in the story, or there are very few, but they serve as nothing more than background for the male character and don't do anything of note. None of them are more than a minor character. There may be nothing sexist about it--there can be a legitimate reason for the lack of women, such as stories being set in places where women are not allowed (a [[Film/TheShawshankRedemption men's prison]], a [[Film/DasBoot WWII-era military submarine]], etc.) This is an example of ChromosomeCasting.
11
12[[folder:Examples]]
13
14[[AC:{{Anime}} & {{Manga}}]]
15* Both ''Manga/{{Crows}}'' and ''Manga/{{Worst}}'' by Hiroshi Takahashi feature no females whomsoever aside from occasional mentions (one of the main characters has no less than 6 girlfriends). This is a seinen manga about inter-school fighting and manly friendship and, despite the premise, even the most rabid YaoiFangirl would be hard-pressed to get any HoYay out of it.
16* Likewise, the satirical manga and anime series ''Manga/CromartieHighSchool''. The mother of one character is seen in at least one episode... And "she" looks ''exactly'' like her son but with a skirt and longer hair.
17* There's not a female character in sight in both ''Anime/CuteHighEarthDefenseClubLove'' and ''Anime/CuteHighEarthDefenseClubHappyKiss'', which is ironic since they have a MagicalGirl vibe going on.
18* ''Manga/{{Kaiji}}''. There is one woman on the show, but she only appears in a single scene in one episode and says no more than two lines. Averted in the movie adaptations, in which a handful of female characters are featured.
19* ''Manga/{{Akagi}}'' has zero women onscreen in the entire show.
20
21[[AC:{{Comics}}]]
22* Most ''Franchise/{{Tintin}}'' books feature no significant female characters and in the series as a whole only Bianca Castafiore can be considered an important female; and she's relevant to the plot in only a few of the stories.
23* Similarly, the ''ComicBook/BlakeAndMortimer'' stories written by their original author E.P Jacobs feature a grand total of one female character who got more than a few lines--and she was a literal medieval DamselInDistress in a TimeTravel episode, who appeared during one-third of the story. Authors who took over the series after Jacobs' death have been adding more female characters to the series.
24* ''ComicBook/TheSmurfs'' had a hundred main characters, none of them female, at first. While Gargamel created the Smurfette early on (third book or so, meaning the seventh adventure overall), she wasn't a regular character, just appearing as a guest character or being name-dropped in a few books. This was eventually dropped by "The Smurf Olympics" when the Smurfette moved to the Smurf Village by the end of the story and Sassette was created two books later, thus turning the book into the namer of TheSmurfettePrinciple.
25
26[[AC:Fanfic]]
27* There are no female main characters in ''Fanfic/CalvinAndHobbesTheSeries'', and the supporting cast only has a few.
28
29[[AC:{{Film}}]]
30* ''Film/{{Dreamcatcher}}'': A stranger in the street early on and numerous extras in the military camp are the only women in the film.
31* ''Film/DrStrangelove'' has precisely one female in the movie, a secretary, who is also a Magazine/{{Playboy}} centrefold.
32* ''Film/{{Gettysburg}}'': There is talk of wives left behind, but the only women that actually appear in the film are either waving to the troops or tending the wounded in the background.
33* ''Theatre/GlengarryGlenRoss'' depicts salesmen in a company with all male employees.
34* ''Film/TheGoodTheBadAndTheUgly'': A prostitute appearing in a single scene is the most important female character and the only one given a name. Every last woman in the film besides her is someone's wife, and all their appearances are within the first hour of the nearly 3-hour film. Rape, incidentally, is on Tuco's LongList of prior offenses, which is entirely PlayedForLaughs (and is one of the crimes he may or may not have made up, anyway). In any case, it is mentioned offhand that the bandido ReallyGetsAround and has been married at least once.
35* ''Film/ForAFewDollarsMore'' has one credited woman who only appears in two brief scenes, and one girl who only appears in a flashback and has no lines
36* ''Film/DuckYouSucker'' has one woman who appears in flashback with no lines, and the only other woman is an annoying racist who is out of the picture in the first 15 minutes.
37* The British monster movie ''Film/{{Gorgo}}'' is mocked for this by the [[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 MST3K]] crew. The only woman who appears is in the background of a crowd scene.
38* ''Film/LawrenceOfArabia''. Famously used as an example of why failing UsefulNotes/TheBechdelTest doesn't automatically makes a movie misogynistic since it takes place during a military campaign in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI.
39* Likewise, in ''Film/MasterAndCommander'', the only women that appear in the film are part of a party of native traders that resupply HMS Surprise.
40* ''Film/ReservoirDogs''. There are three women in the movie: the waitress who doesn't meet Pink's tipping standards (who is never seen), the girl that Mr. Pink pulls out of the car while running from the cops, and the driver of the hijacked car that shoots (and is immediately killed by) Orange.
41* ''Film/TheShawshankRedemption'', being set in a men's prison, has only Andy's barely-glimpsed murdered wife, from whom he was estranged anyway, and a few extras when Brooks and Red are paroled. A good case could be made that the poster and film clips of Creator/RitaHayworth are the film's strongest female presence; an even better case could be made that this is why it flopped, despite nigh-universal critical acclaim.
42* Creator/JohnCarpenter's ''Film/TheThing1982''. No women among the main cast and the only female presences are a chess computer that's out of commission 30 seconds after the introductory scene of R.J. [=MacReady=], and a 10-second glimpse of a female contestant in some game show the two mechanics are watching. This may be TruthInTelevision, however; there aren't many women stationed in Antarctica.
43* ''Film/TwelveAngryMen''. The only characters are the members of an all-male jury. Some modern versions try to correct this by making the judge a woman. Others simply opt to retitle the play "Twelve Angry Jurors" just so that some of the jury can be women.
44* ''Film/MyDinnerWithAndre'' is a very minimalist film with only two main characters: both men. A wife is mentioned and women are seen in the restaurant but it focuses on the two male leads.
45* ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'' is a very male-dominated movie. We do see women working in space, though largely as stewardesses, secretaries, and other stereotypically female professions. Dr. Floyd does speak to two female scientists, but the group conducting the lunar expedition as well as the ''Discovery'' crew are both made up entirely of men. Arthur C. Clarke's sequel novels, especially ''2010: Odyssey Two'', incorporate more strong female characters.
46* ''Film/SavingPrivateRyan'' has only a brief scene where the group encounters a French family and the final scene with Ryan and his wife. The plot is also kicked off by a nameless woman typing up the condolence letters, and Ryan's mother appears briefly.
47%%* ''Film/{{Platoon}}''
48* ''Film/TheGreatEscape'' has an all-male main cast. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], as it is set in a WWII POW camp, where there generally were not many women. There were talks about including a MsFanservice in the cast, but it never happened.
49* ''Film/{{The Magnificent Seven|1960}}'': all the titular seven are males, the villain is male and most of the supporting cast are male. Petra, Chico's TokenRomance, is the only female with a speaking part. Surprisingly when it was remade as a [[Series/TheMagnificentSeven1998 TV series]], they didn't give one of the seven a GenderFlip but instead included a female journalist as a significant character.
50* ''Film/{{Dunkirk}}'' focuses on the evacuation of the male soldiers from the eponymous city, as well as the (also entirely male) civilians and fighter pilots who come to their aid.
51
52[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
53* Used in ''Literature/AiNoKusabi'' to justify its CastFullOfGay.
54* ''Literature/TheHobbit'': Literally no female characters appear in the entire book. The only female character that is even mentioned is Bilbo's mother Belladonna, and even she only gets a very brief mention--other than that, you'd think women plain didn't exist in this universe.
55%%* ''Literature/RobinsonCrusoe''.
56* Creator/TerryBrooks' ''The Sword of Literature/{{Shannara}}'', probably because it was so heavily influenced by ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings''; the next book has the world saved by a girl and in the third one of the trilogy, one of the MainCharacters is a girl.
57* The stories of Creator/HPLovecraft: there are virtually no female characters across such a vast body of work. Only one of his seventy-plus stories has a female protagonist, and even then there's a whole complex issue wherein [[spoiler: it turns out to be a man in a woman's body]]. At best, a character's wife briefly appears and maybe gets a line or two.
58* ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'' chronicles the adventures of some students from an all-boys school as they try to survive on a deserted island.
59* The ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Literature/SmallGods'' has a majority male cast because it's about a church that doesn't allow female priests. The "main" female characters are Brutha's grandmother, who is a PosthumousCharacter, and the Sea Queen, a goddess who gets one scene.
60* Creator/IsaacAsimov:
61** ''Literature/FoundationSeries'': The first stories published in the series contain zero female characters. Later books in the series do include [[TheSmurfettePrinciple at least one woman]], including female protagonists in "Literature/TheMule" and "Literature/SearchForTheFoundation". Characters remain mostly masculine, even in the books published by other authors.
62** ''Literature/TheCompleteAdventuresOfLuckyStarr'': This series is direly short of women. A female alien appears briefly in the first book, a wife appears in the second (and promptly goes away to make coffee for the men), and they're absent from the final three books.
63* ''Literature/TheStrangeCaseOfDrJekyllAndMrHyde''. The original story had practically no women aside from the unnamed witness who saw Mr. Hyde commit a murder. A huge difference from most, if not all adaptations, which usually tack in a {{Love Interest|s}} for Dr. Jekyll.
64* The first half of ''Literature/WatershipDown''. The second half revolves around trying to find some females so the warren doesn't die out.
65* Creator/GKChesterton's first novel ''TheNapoleonOfNottinghamHill''. Of course, judging by his later works, probably what the women were doing was refusing to get involved in such silly nonsense.
66* ''Literature/{{Havemercy}}''. The first two books are guilty of this where there's no major female character and there are only a handful of women as side characters. Fortunately, the last two books gave more female characters with important roles and as narrators.
67
68[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
69* ''Series/DeadliestWarrior'': Being a show about historical warriors battling to the death that's RatedMForManly, it's to be expected. Briefly became a type 4 in one episode of Season 2 (CIA vs. KGB), where both sides had one female operative, and one of them ([[spoiler:The KGB]]) kicked quite a bit of ass. Later, it got its first female warrior in her own right in the form of UsefulNotes/JoanOfArc, who fought against William the Conqueror. [[spoiler:She even won.]]
70* ''Series/RedDwarf'''s plot hinged entirely on three guys (four once Kryten joined the cast) getting stuck on a spaceship in the middle of deep space 3 million years from Earth (though for a little while they did have a female computer). There were even a few episodes where the guys tried to get women on board, only for something strange to be revealed. The series finally gained a female lead halfway through Season 7 but even then, Season 8 largely took place in the ship's prison, and her role was greatly overshadowed by the other male characters. Then she was completely written out in the miniseries that followed.
71* ''WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends'' used to be like this until characters like Daisy, Mavis, and Emily came along. As the show goes on, it goes up a few levels on the scale.
72* ''Series/BandOfBrothers'', detailing the exploits of the 101st Airborne in World War II, has characters that are 99% male. Only two females have speaking parts: Renee, a nurse in Episode 6, and Mrs Lamb, a washerwoman in Episode 3. Women do appear as featured extras in scenes outside the battlefield.
73
74[[AC:TabletopGames]]
75* The parody game ''TabletopGame/{{Hol}}'' has no pre-generated female characters to play as because "no woman has been stupid or unlucky" to be sent to the HellholePrison.
76
77[[AC:{{Toys}}]]
78* ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'' has only a handful of definitely female characters[[note]]by which we mean "characters with TertiaryFemaleCharacteristics", because how ''primary'' sexual characteristics work with [[MechanicalLifeForms Cybertronians]] is yet to be addressed in canon[[/note]] out of dozens in total, and even more rarely is there more than [[TheSmurfettePrinciple one girl per team]]. The more recent comic spinoffs have been a bit better about this, but not by much. The one complete aversion in the whole franchise is the ''Kiss Players'' manga, but that particular work is ''definitely'' outside of canon and isn't really an improvement from a gender equality standpoint anyway.
79
80[[AC:VideoGames]]
81* In ''VideoGame/PunchOut'', the only women ever seen are [[SurferDude Super Macho Man's]] fangirls in still pictures, and Aran Ryan's sister who is mentioned and nothing else. Justified though--it ''is'' a male boxing circle, after all. The only exception is [[WholesomeCrossdresser Heike Kagero]].
82* Many of the past decade's video games have featured a watered-down version of this trope out of pragmatism: The differences between male and female skeletons means that a female character model will look noticeably wrong if it's moving the same way as the male characters (and animation rigs are fairly costly in terms of development resources). This hurdle doesn't stop you from including women in motion-captured cutscenes and the like, so many developers partially avert this by having female characters in prominent supporting roles (e.g. Cortana, Anya, and the female helicopter pilot in ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty 4''). ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyAdvancedWarfare'' features the first female squadmate who runs around with you on the ground since ''Call Of Duty: Finest Hour'', [[TheSmurfettePrinciple although she's the only woman]] who does that in the entire game, and the [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyGhosts two ]] [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyAdvancedWarfare games ]] in the franchise allow you to play as a female soldier in multiplayer. And since the male characters whose screen time exceeds theirs tend to be "blank slate" tough guys, said women often wind up with more depth and personality than anyone else.
83* ''[[VideoGame/MegaManX Maverick Hunter X]]'': the only female character in the game is a navigator who helps X in coordinating the robot masters but plays no significant part in the story.
84** The rest of the X series fairs a little better, having female navigators starting with 4 (and most famously one of said navigators as a boss in 4 as well,) and finally letting them take to the field as unlockable characters in 8.
85* The original ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' games bar ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehogCD Sonic CD]]'' (which introduced Amy) and ''[[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehogSpinball Sonic Spinball]]'' (which has the female cast of ''WesternAnimation/SonicTheHedgehogSatAM'' in incidental roles).
86* ''Silver Chaos''. But, [[CastFullOfGay you see...]]
87* ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' has no playable female characters, just eight classes that are clearly male and [[AmbiguousGender the Pyro]]. The only person who is clearly female appears in-game merely as TheVoice. [[https://www.youtube.com/user/DustyOldRoses/videos Fan mods exist]], though, to swap the genders and voices of (so far) six of the classes[[note]]Medic, Spy, Scout, Engineer, Sniper, and (unvoiced) Heavy[[/note]].
88** However, the comics introduce and develop numerous female characters who are just as badass as the male characters, such as Ms. Pauling, Heavy's sisters, and the announcer, making it fairly close to the Almost perfect equality.
89* ''VideoGame/HalfLife'' and its spinoffs (''Opposing Force'' and ''Blue Shift'') have no female scientists and soldiers shown in the game at first. However, there are some female Mooks that Gordon Freeman faced later on. The multiplayer segment and co-op game features two playable female characters and the sequel, ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'', introduces Alyx. The FanRemake, ''VideoGame/BlackMesa'', adds some female scientists as well.
90
91[[AC:WebAnimation]]
92* ''WebAnimation/HappyTreeFriends'' only has four female characters out of a cast of 23. Not as egregious as most examples here, since said female characters are given [[ADayInTheLimelight spotlight episodes]] (although Lammy wasn't so lucky due to her late introduction).
93
94[[AC:{{Webcomics}}]]
95* The warcamp in ''Webcomic/{{Goblins}}'' is males-only by mandate of the goblins' deity, with female spellcasters the only exception. Justified in that the "warcamp" is an [[MenAreTheExpendableGender expendable decoy settlement]], which diverts adventurers' attention away from the hidden village where the noncombatant women and children can live in safety.
96
97[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
98* ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForce'' has very little female characters. The women that ''do'' appear are either one-shots or just simply background characters.
99* Avoiding this may have been the reason behind the GenderFlip[=s=] of various Creator/HannaBarbera characters in ''WesternAnimation/{{Jellystone}}'', as the characters in [=HB=]'s library are predominantly male.
100* ''WesternAnimation/{{Metalocalypse}}''. Only a small handful of episodes give female characters any lines; mostly they're just nude or seminude groupies.
101[[/folder]]
102
103!Level 2: Whores, Whores, Whores…
104In this kind of fiction, [[AllWomenAreLustful all female characters are either complete sluts, who will screw around with anything that moves]], or helpless and disposable sex slaves, whose sole purpose of existence is being raped or taken advantage of by male characters. [[NotIfTheyEnjoyedItRationalization Of course, they ought to enjoy the rape]] and thank men for it. Needless to say, in such fictions, women are also commanded to grovel at men's feet, StayInTheKitchen, Et Cetera… or else.
105
106[[folder:Examples]]
107
108[[AC:Anime and Manga]]
109%%* The infamous ''Manga/MadBull34''.
110* ''Manga/{{Sanctuary}}'': All of the female characters are portrayed either as prostitutes, or a sexy lady one of the main characters have picked up, or models the politicians are having sex with, or ladies the yakuza are raping. Though there are two prominent female characters (Kyoko and an American politician, who demands Japan to drop their high import tax on American cars), their roles were later reduced where Kyoko ends up falling in love with Hojo and forgetting her mission to arrest him while the politician ends up sleeping with Asami which prompted her to drop her demands and leave the country.
111* ''Kiniitta Chitsu ni Ikinari Nakadashi OK na Resort Shima'': in this {{Hentai}} manga series, all women are whores and all men are cowards. The series takes it so far that it enters FetishRetardant and {{Narm}} territory.
112
113[[AC:Comic Books]]
114* Level name comes from an infamous MemeticMutation that sprung up around Creator/FrankMiller. Most of his works, especially ''ComicBook/SinCity'', are set here.
115
116[[AC:{{Film}}]]
117* The {{mad scientist}}s trying to take over the world in ''Film/OurManFlint'' hypnotize the majority of women into "pleasure units" who serve, flirt, canoodle, and presumably sleep with any man without question. For his part, white knighting Flint manages to undo this by uttering "You are not a pleasure unit" in a woman's ear.
118
119[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
120* John Norman's ''Literature/{{Gor}}'' has this all over the place. The women of Gor fall into one of three categories--free women, who are supposed to be afforded respect; outlaws, who have no legal protection and are subject to capture and worse; and slaves, often of the [[SexSlave sexual variety]]. It is all too easy for a woman of the first two categories to become the third category, and unlike men who fall into slavery, who generally break free of their bondage and move on with their lives, women who become slaves generally tend to stay slaves.
121* ''Literature/TheEyeOfArgon'' has this, though the men are sluts too.
122* ''[[Literature/ChroniclesOfBloodAndStone The Fifth Sorceress]]'' and other books in that series. More or less, anyway.
123* ''Literature/AClockworkOrange'' portrays women this way, with the exception of Alex's mother and a couple of female doctors. Of course, the book and film are [[UnreliableNarrator told from the perspective of a psychopath]].
124* Overwhelmingly the case in the works of the Creator/MarquisDeSade. Women are capable of cruelty, as characters like Eugenie and Juliette prove beyond doubt, but {{Character Filibuster}}s about male superiority and the pleasures of torturing women abound in the Sadean canon.
125* The ''Literature/PaladinOfShadows'' series by Creator/JohnRingo, which even he considers a [[GuiltyPleasures "wanker piece"]]. The protagonist is said by the fandom to "collect hookers like cats", and it's the origin of the "OH JOHN RINGO NO!" MemeticMutation.
126
127%%[[AC:TableTopGames]]
128%%* ''TabletopGame/{{FATAL}}'' is here, among its many other flaws (including the very fact that it exists).
129
130[[AC:VideoGames]]
131%%* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto''. Lord, Grand Theft Auto!
132* ''Videogame/TheWitcher'':
133** Every time you sleep with a woman, you are rewarded with a card that pictures her doing something "sexy" (like strangling a chicken (?!?!)). There are several important women, but they are all obsessed with Geralt and defined largely by their sexual allure.
134** Succubi in this series are [[NonMaliciousMonster harmless]] and thus a complete package of male sexual fantasy. There is zero downside to having sex with one, as they're all absurdly beautiful and kinky, and have few concerns outside of giving and seeking sexual pleasure. While we're told that their male equivalents (incubi) exist, we've never seen one or any other creature which would reverse genders. [[MonsterMisogyny Any monsters that desire human women are hostile and deadly]], as a ''rule''.
135** Thankfully, the treatment of women improved quite drastically in [[VideoGame/TheWitcher2AssassinsOfKings both]] [[VideoGame/TheWitcher3WildHunt sequels]], with ''VideoGame/TheWitcher3WildHunt'' in particular being praised for having some of the most empowering and memorable female characters in recent memory, such as Ciri, Triss, and Yennefer. For that game, see the next section down.
136* ''VideoGame/RideToHellRetribution'' has every single woman being treated as complete slutty powerups who reward you with ''immediate'' sex after you save her from a male abuser. ''In the same room as his bloody corpse''.
137
138[[AC:Webcomics]]
139%%* ''Webcomic/{{Warmage}}''.
140* The ''Webcomic/CiemWebcomicSeries'' and its UltimateUniverse counterpart both have shades of this. Yes, the women outnumber the men and get to have more adventures. But a lot of their adventures can best be described as "almost got raped/killed/whatever today, but got away in the nick of time." Men hold nearly all the positions of authority, and the few women that have any authority are either useless or psychotic. With exception of a small handful of good guys, all the men are either [[AllMenArePerverts mindless sex addicts]] or depraved sadists or [[ManipulativeBastard sleazy manipulators]], all bent on enslaving women and usually abusing them sexually. The women are [[AllWomenAreLustful completely obsessed]] with their [[SlaveToPR romantic/sexual reputations]], and the damage done from all the times they're raped and/or nearly killed.
141[[/folder]]
142
143!Level 3: Know Your Place, Woman!
144Women are useless and most of the time don't contribute anything -- and when they do, their participation is very likely restricted to support roles such as [[StayInTheKitchen household maintenance]], nursing kids, [[ScienceHerosBabeAssistant assisting a scientist in their lab]] ([[HopelessWithTech or rather, clumsily trying to]]), or taking care of the injured in a field hospital (on condition that no male doctors[=/=]healers are available). If they are in trouble, they can only wait to be rescued. Also, they are never in control of anything -- [[MenActWomenAre males are always patriarchal leaders]], and their actions can be questioned only by other males. Most of the purest and straightest (which means those that will never change) examples of TheLoad and/or DamselInDistress are here.
145
146[[folder:Examples]]
147
148[[AC:{{Anime}} & {{Manga}}]]
149* ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'' has very few combat-capable female characters and all of them are vastly inferior to the male fighters--in fact, there are ''no'' women shown to be trained in any SupernaturalMartialArts school, and this is a world where someone who isn't a martial artist is a {{mook|s}}. What drives the series to this level, however, is the treatment of Mamiya, the most competent female fighter in the series. Her {{Love Interest|s}} gets to beat her by [[DefeatByModesty tearing her clothes off]] and proving that underneath the warrior, she's still a woman, and [[StayInTheKitchen a woman's job is to stay off the battlefield]]. After [[spoiler: he dies]], she voluntarily stops fighting.
150* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamAge'' has most of the female characters as supporting roles or getting killed ([[spoiler:Yurin's]] death is a prime example). It's worse the SatelliteLoveInterest such as Emily and Romary who don't appear much in the next generations as if their entire existence in the show is to pop out Asemu and Kio respectively. Wendy, Kio's presumed love interest, barely does much aside from taking care of the kids and it's only the side materials that give her a proper role.
151* ''Manga/BakiTheGrappler'': A deliberate example, being mostly a fighting series with [[ChromosomeCasting only male fighters]]. The only female characters are Baki's slavishly devoted SatelliteLoveInterest, who displays a perpetual resting bitch face due to how miserable Baki's lifestyle makes her own life and whose existence is practically irrelevant, and Baki's mother whose importance is only shown in flashbacks. However, Baki never abuses his girlfriend, nor is the plot encouraging the destruction of women at all. Women are simply irrelevant. Not enemies, just irrelevant.
152%%* ''Anime/WeissKreuz''
153
154[[AC:Film]]
155* Before ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe'', ''Film/JamesBond'' movies were like this, at best. Bond was a jerk at best, a chauvinist at worst. (Of course, that said more about the time period than it did for him.)
156** Exceptions from the Connery era include Pussy Galore from ''Film/{{Goldfinger}}'', and especially Tatiana Romanova from ''Film/FromRussiaWithLove'', and Domino Derval from ''Film/{{Thunderball}}''. Pussy, her PunnyName notwithstanding, is almost a physical match for Bond and essential to undoing Goldfinger's plot, while both Tatiana and Domino actually kill the main villains of their respective films.
157* Unusually for an action film series spanning between the late 2000s and mid-2010s, the ''Film/{{Taken}}'' films fall firmly on this level. The vast majority of male characters are the only ones involved in the fighting and drive most of the plot, with the very few relevant females[[note]]Mainly in the first movie, as Kim and Lenore are actually the two remaining females from ''Taken 2'' onwards.[[/note]] taking the role of either DamselInDistress, DisposableWoman or both. By ''Taken 2'', Kim is the only female who outgrows this position, and even then she just provides non-offensive support to Bryan, while merely trying to dodge the bad guys rather than at least fighting them back briefly with the means she has in hand (to say nothing of the fact that she returns to damsel status in ''Taken 3''). Of particular mention is the fact that plenty of Albanian women are seen mourning for their relatives at the opening funeral scene in ''Taken 2'', yet none of them appear in the Albanian families' mission to get revenge on Bryan afterwards.
158
159[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
160* At first, ''Literature/WarAndPeace''. It is not stretching to say men are the characters of War and women the characters of Peace.
161* [[Literature/TheTripods The original Tripods trilogy]] fits squarely here. There is only one relevant female character, and her only real influence on the story is to provide a HeroicBSOD for the protagonist when she [[spoiler:is handed over to the Tripods, stuffed, and put on display]].
162* ''Film/{{Machete}}'' is guilty to the extreme of this trope, border lining on the Level 2 above.
163* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' is a complicated and deconstructed case. The Westerosi society is patriarchal and sexist (except Dorne, see below) which had several incompetent, evil and insane men leading their houses sidelining their more stable female relatives behind. This is brought by the ancient civil war, Dance of the Dragons, where Rhaenyra Targaryen's defeat by her brother Aegon II, led to stricter laws of agnetic-cognetic succession despite that she is her father's chosen heir. There are female leaders such as Cersei Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen; however, they were still looked down upon by their sex. For Cersei's case, her rule in the fourth book [[spoiler:after her father's death]] made things worse which got herself arrest for adultery and forced to walk in the streets naked as punishment. Dany may be the last Targaryen heiress but many men attempted to woo her because of her looks, her dragons, or both. Action girls such as Brienne of Tarth and Asha Greyjoy are looked down which is also seen in the backstory where one girl went SweetPollyOliver to join the Night's Watch; but since it's an ArmyOfThievesAndWhores, she got a horrible ending. Of course, there's the RapePillageAndBurn tactic deployed by Tywin Lannister and Ser Gregor Clegane during the War of the Five Kings. In essence, it's a story set in a world where women are meant to know their place, but a narrative that very much depicts them as equals.
164* In ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'', this is the general view in the [[KnightTemplar Northern Confederation]] and among its allies. The collapse of the decadent and corrupt United States and its Godless liberalism put an end to the illusions of political correctness and female equality, and in the new, Godly order, women are expected to know their place -- and be grateful that they haven't ended up in [[NoWomansLand a place with an even worse degree of oppression]], like the Middle East. This attitude is also influenced by the fact that their worst enemy is a LadyLand.
165
166[[AC:Live-Action TV]]
167%%* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''.
168* ''Series/DoctorWho'' at its worst tends to fall here, especially in the classic series.
169* ''Series/BlakesSeven'' usually falls under "Men Are More Equal" or "Almost Perfect Equality", depending, but the episodes by Ben Steed usually end up here. Especially "[[Recap/BlakesSevenS4E2Power Power]]", which serves as an AuthorFilibuster as to how women's natural place is to be subservient to men and woman trying to defy this status will be the doom of society.
170
171[[AC:Oral Tradition]]
172* Most of the classic {{Fairy Tale}}s about the prince (or FarmBoy) saving the princess.
173
174[[AC:Tabletop Games]]
175* ''TabletopGame/{{Pendragon}}'' defaults to this. Female knights are possible, but male is the assumed default and the game offers little mechanical support for them (much to the frustration of people who want to play them).
176
177[[AC:Video Games]]
178* Most ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' games, with Peach as a perfect DamselInDistress. However, ''VideoGame/SuperPrincessPeach'' is an inversion, along with ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros2'' and ''VideoGame/SuperMario3DWorld''. But never forget that the 1980s and the same company (Creator/{{Nintendo}}) also [[Franchise/{{Metroid}} brought us]] SamusIsAGirl. Later games in the series and the [=RPGs=] do a better job at giving Peach a more active role, even when she's kidnapped.
179* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'':
180** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyI'', though considering [[FeaturelessProtagonist the party members aren't defined as male other than (limited) visual clues]], you could cast them as females. The game still only features two named female characters, one is a DamselInDistress, the other a blind witch.
181** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'' has one female protagonist, and also including Princess Hilda as a major {{N|onPlayerCharacter}}PC and [[PirateGirl temporary party member Leila]]. It's still up to the mostly male party and their almost all-male support to take on the Emperor though.
182** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII'' sits squarely here, with once again only three female [=NPCs=], two of them [[HeroicSacrifice give their lives]] to make sure the (presumed all male) heroes can continue on towards beating the bad guy.
183** The DS Remake added [[AffirmativeActionGirl Refia]] to the main party. With three boys. And her dad forbids her from adventuring at first.
184** One of the major controversies surrounding ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXV'' was the deliberate choice to make the playable cast entirely male. The writers defended this decision as being a story that could only be told with the gender disparity, but that justification has only fueled further debate. Further controversy came about when the story revealed that most of the female cast are either inactive non-combatants, [[DamselInDistress damsels-in-distress]], [[MsFanservice fanservice]], or a combination of the three, and the sole playable female character ([[spoiler:Aranea]]) is only playable for a brief time and [[spoiler:disappears from the story entirely during the final act, as we're only told of what she'd been doing in the interim]].
185* ''VideoGame/DragonQuestI'' had only one named female character, who was a DamselInDistress.
186* The WizardingSchool of ''VideoGame/AvencastRiseOfTheMage'' has no female instructors and few female students; they mostly give {{fetch quest}}s that imply they're incapable of simple tasks. Outside the school, there is only one relevant female character who is indirectly responsible for the fall of an empire and the deaths of thousands because she wasn't willing to risk personal loss.
187* ''VideoGame/TheWitcher3WildHunt'', as a generalization (due to DeliberateValuesDissonance, since the game is meant to reflect medieval social mores), alongside rare "exceptional" cases. Almost every bandit, thug, henchman, and soldier Geralt encounters is male, the vast majority of important women are young and beautiful while most important men are tough and weathered. Most heads of state are men, and that continues all the way down to local barons and village ealdormen. Named women who are considered adept in male fields (like combat or craftsmanship) are treated as [[YouGoGirl exceptional pioneers]] who are not just good but often [[FlawlessToken better]] and [[WomenAreWiser wiser]] than men. When subjects like rape and spousal abuse become a plot point, it's always male-on-female. At one point, the female {{Deuteragonist}} Ciri is praised by a group of soldiers for being an ActionGirl, but she's treated as an exception with one of the soldiers then questioning her ability to ride a horse since most women he knows "can't ride anything other than a cock proper".
188* ''VideoGame/SengokuBasara'' games: ''Basara'' only has ''eight'' playable female characters who have less significant roles in the story with the exception of Oichi, Ii Naotora, and the GenderFlip Saika Magoichi. Considering that the game took place in the 1500s, [[JustifiedTrope it’s justified]]. But once the developers made it clear that they wouldn't be adding more female playable characters in Sanada Yukimura’s spinoff game, it made players think that the franchise is gearing itself toward the yaoi fandom with a CastFullOfPrettyBoys, which made it detrimental for the franchise to slide further to the “Know Your Place, Women” level.
189* The ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' games straddle the line between this level and Level 4. Men are far more numerous and are the showrunners, while women are token characters and run the gamut from {{Disposable Sex Worker}}s and porn stars ([[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIII Misty]], [[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoViceCity Candy Suxxx]]) to criminal matriarchs ([[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIII Catalina and Asuka]], [[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoViceCity Auntie Poulet]], and [[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV Elizabeta]]). Some of the women in the series can stand up for themselves, but often they serve as little more than love interests, sex appeal, and/or [[WomanlinessAsPathos the cause of conflict and motivation for the main protagonists]]. Later games nudge the series closer towards equality with a larger number of plot-relevant female characters, though; ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'' in particular introduces female police officers to the previously male-dominated forces and allows you to play as a female character in the Online component with no gameplay-related disadvantages over male characters.
190
191[[AC:Web Animation]]
192
193* ''WebAnimation/AlphabetLore'': Only about four female characters exist in the series: K, P, who [[spoiler:was killed accidentally in the middle of the story]], and also W and Y, who didn't do much.
194
195[[AC:Western Animation]]
196* ''WesternAnimation/ThePenguinsOfMadagascar'': There are very few females. It's no surprise to find that the lead male Skipper can be a sexist jerk.
197[[/folder]]
198
199!Level 4: Men Are More Equal
200At this level, it looks like both sexes are equal. Then why do only males have all the cool and most offensive powers and equipment, while their female teammates do things like [[CombatMedic providing first aid]], serving as the MissionControl, working in the laboratory and you would be damned if you will ever see any of them in an actual fight? And even if they go into a fight, they end up either defeated easily, insignificant in the overall victory, [[DesignatedGirlFight or end up fighting another girl]]. Almost every unlucky ActionGirl that lives in a world set at this level will suffer from {{Chickification}} and eventually turn into or be revealed as a FauxActionGirl, and the few ones who don't [[NeverASelfMadeWoman will still owe their success to their mentor, who is invariably a guy]] -- oh, and they will be [[VasquezAlwaysDies less likely to survive till the end of the story]]. At this level, men and women are equal, but [[StayInTheKitchen some things are still a man's job]].
201
202[[folder:Examples]]
203
204[[AC:{{Anime}} & {{Manga}}]]
205* A lot of {{Shonen|Demographic}} franchises will fall here, due in part to as the name suggests, the demographic being mostly teenaged boys.
206* In ''Anime/SuperDimensionFortressMacross'', humans are here. A major plot point is how changes of this status quo begin to appear and develop through later ''Anime/{{Macross}}'' series.
207* ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}'': Many Universal Century works tend to zig-zag between this and the next category. Female characters are very much present, such as [[Anime/MobileSuitGundam Sayla Mass]] or [[Anime/MobileSuitGundamUnicorn Audrey Burne]] [[spoiler:aka Mineva Lao Zabi]], but they vary from being capable and prominent to merely in the background. Later works however place women on an even more equal footing.
208* ''Anime/MobileFighterGGundam''. Most of the female characters have strong personalities and shown to be competent and capable, but still revolve around the more numerous male characters (often because it's their [[MissionControl their]] [[WrenchWench job]], which then evolves into affection). Although there are two female Gundam pilots, Allenby and [[spoiler:Rain]], they don't get the same specialty techniques as the male pilots and the second spends the majority of the finale episodes as a DamselInDistress. Allenby avoids {{Designated Girl Fight}}s (being the only female Gundam Fighter in the Finals her opponents are male, and she goes after big, burly male thugs on several occasions) and her fighting skills are shown to be on par with the rest of the Shuffle Alliance.
209* ''Manga/RurouniKenshin'', where the female characters are supposed to be very competent and can look big and impressive, but all supposed {{Action Girl}}s are actually {{Faux Action Girl}}s who nearly always fail in the line of battle, though the anime does help remedy this by making some of the female characters, Kaoru in particular, more involved in the action.
210* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' ends up being this way. All of the Rookie Nine are composed of teams of two boys and one girl. By Part II, and even in some cases with Temari and Tsunade in Part I, this slowly becomes subverted, as several female characters end up being instrumental in defeating stronger foes.
211* ''Manga/DragonBall''. The female characters are however competent and many of them are great fighters but become less significant as the series goes on and make room for the male main characters. Unfortunately, all of the characters aside from [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy the Saiyans]] got [[CantCatchUp less significant]] by ''Anime/DragonBallZ''.
212* Parts 3 through 5 of ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' feature few female characters, and the ones there are typically fall into the "victim to be rescued/avenged" or "one-shot villainess who has the hots for the BigBad" roles (Trish Una from ''Manga/GoldenWind'' being the exception).
213* While ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'' is more focused on Ichigo and we have two [[DamselInDistress damsels in distress]], there's justification why both [[spoiler:Rukia and Orihime]] aren't doing anything while being imprisoned and we have Yoruichi and Soi-Fon, two powerful female Shinigami who proved themselves in fights with very strong enemies.
214** Another woman, [[spoiler:adult form Nel]], almost killed [[spoiler:Nnoitora, an Arrancar who later gave Kenpachi a hard fight]] in a fight, but her powerup didn't last, and her opponent had not activated his SuperMode at the time.
215** Visoreds' power rank is based on how long he/she can stay with his/her masks on. The first time [[spoiler:Ichigo]] lasted three seconds, while Mashiro took ''15 hours'' to reach her limits. [[spoiler: Although this ends up being more of an InformedAbility since Mashiro still managed to wear out all that power in a single fight ending up being rescued by Kensei.]]
216* ''Manga/DeathNote''. A few of the female characters, such as Misa and Rem, are okay but the vast majority pale in comparison to the men or come across as almost TooDumbToLive. We're looking at you, [[IdiotBall Naomi Misora]].
217* ''Anime/{{Texhnolyze}}'' may belong here. There are only two female characters in major plot roles, Doc and Ran. And while they are perfectly good at the jobs they perform (and Doc is a MadScientist, which is an unusual role for a woman), both of them answer to men. There are also no women with any combat ability worth speaking of, as there are with men.
218* ''Manga/MuhyoAndRoji''. There are skilled females of various trades in the Magical Law Society (Biko, whose skill at making tools is crucial on several occasions, her teacher Rio and Imai, a skilled Judge) and Ark (Ivy, [[spoiler:Rio, again]] and Panza), but the majority of the most influential and powerful heroes and villains are male.
219* Even though there was a female dog named Cross in the Ohu army in ''Manga/GingaNagareboshiGin'', the dogs in the army are almost all male. You can't justify it by male dogs being bigger and stronger than females because Weed, the protagonist of the sequel ''Anime/GingaDensetsuWeed,'' is small and not even fully grown, certainly far smaller than an average fully-grown adult female, but is portrayed as being one of the best fighters nonetheless. [[note]] The narrative makes it's obvious this is all due to the author's sexism; we get a line from Cross saying that she loves babies because she's female followed by her diving off a cliff to save a random unrelated puppy (this would have been fine if any of the males would have been willing to do the same thing), a male dog about to become a father admitting to preferring having a son and being backed up by other males, and almost all of the few females shown all end up being damsels in distress, including a [[FauxActionGirl random female "warrior"]] who gets captured the very next scene after being introduced just because the plot needed someone to cause the fight to go wrong. [[/note]]
220* ''Manga/{{Toriko}}'' winds up here. Women like Melk the Second and Rin are shown to be quite capable at their own jobs (neither of which is typical feminine work), and a few other competent women are sprinkled here and there, but they all get very little screentime compared to the main male cast.
221* ''Anime/{{Bakugan}}'' is an odd case. It originally started off as Level 5, with a balanced main cast of males and females and both genders participating in the plot. However, starting with the second season (''New Vestroia''), all the major female characters were PutOnABus and DemotedToExtra, and the new cast became more male-dominated with TheSmurfettePrinciple mostly in effect, causing the show to slide back into Level 4.
222* ''Literature/LegendOfTheGalacticHeroes'' tends to zig-zag between this and Almost Perfect Equality. While there are relatively fewer female characters of any prominence, women are shown to be all over the place, ranging from submissive ladies in waiting to skillful bureaucrats. It also depends on the faction, with the FPA tending towards GenderIsNoObject, though even the more patriarchal Empire has a number of formidable women. Essentially it's the opposite of ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', showing a galaxy where gender is treated quite equally but narratively there's little more than one or two token females on any given side.
223* In ''Anime/DigimonFrontier'', [=Zoe/Izumi=] is the only female member out of the 6 spirit warriors, and she loses in several one on one fights and only winning against the [[DesignatedGirlFight lone female enemy]] Ranamon. A massive step back compared to the other [[Anime/DigimonAdventure three]] [[Anime/DigimonAdventure02 Digimon]] [[Anime/DigimonTamers animes]] before it, where there are more female characters and they are just as competent and characterized as the males. That being said, she’s the only other character, aside from Takuya, to claim both her opponent’s Human and Beast Spirits at the same time and is the only one to avoid having her D-Tector stolen, both with the Toucanmon and in the final battle against Cherubimon.
224* In ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'', on average, the males have much more destructive and powerful quirks suited for combat, while the females have more utility based powers. Expect the males to be the ones fighting the actual threat, while the females are relegated to rescuing civilians. That said, the series does later introduce some {{Action Girl}}s with genuine combat abilities.
225
226[[AC:{{Film}}]]
227* Many manly action movies such as ''Film/ConAir'', which had two women with supporting roles: they were the protagonist's wife and the female prison guard.
228* The ''Film/JamesBond'' movies where the Bond Girl is his professional equal, such as ''Film/YouOnlyLiveTwice'', ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe'', or ''Film/TomorrowNeverDies''. They [[BadassInDistress might still need rescuing in the climax]], but they're not constant {{damsels in distress}}. However, Aki in ''You Only Live Twice'' is [[FauxActionGirl never shown fighting]] and is mostly viewed as a [[MsFanservice pretty piece of scenery]], and while Kissy is shown to be physically capable, she spends most of the climax cowering behind Tiger Tanaka.
229* In ''Franchise/StarWars'' (the original trilogy, anyway) Princess Leia had a less active role than the major male characters and only played a major combat role in ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi''. Even there, Han rather than her led the Endor strike force even though she'd been with the Rebellion a lot longer and was among its top leaders. All the fighter pilots in all three movies were male, and the only other female character, Mon Mothma, was in a leadership but non-combat role (though the ExpandedUniverse reveals she is the leader of the Rebellion, former Senator representing her homeworld, etc.)
230* Lynn Redgrave's character in the SpaghettiWestern ''Viva la muerte... tua!'' is a perfectly capable ActionGirl reporter who saves the men's lives multiple times, yet sadly doesn't get the respect she deserves in the end.
231
232[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
233* Most of ''Literature/TolkiensLegendarium'' fits around here. The gender balance of named characters is ''heavily'' skewed in favor of men (in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', you barely need both hands to count all the onscreen named female characters), female leaders are rather uncommon, and female warriors are even fewer. Even in terms of worldbuilding, it is far more common for a character to have a named father and an unnamed mother than it is to have both parents named, to say nothing of the reverse. The world of Middle-Earth is explicitly patriarchal, which is rarely called into question. That said, there are still a number of rather strong and active female personalities, such as Galadriel, Eowyn, and Luthien, as well as a number of female Valar, and women are universally treated with respect by any good-aligned character. Adaptations have often tried to deal with this by either playing up the handful of women who do exist, or inventing new ones wholecloth.
234* ''Literature/CourtshipRite'' has a society much like ours in this respect (though [[DeliberateValuesDissonance very different in others]]). Some clans are blatantly sexist, while others profess a more egalitarian view. Still, even in the more open-minded clans, it seems like it's ''mainly'' men in positions of power and mainly men who do the fighting.
235* In ''Literature/EndersGame'', the battle school seems to have no problems recruiting kids of either gender, but it's stated that boys tend to get accepted more often than girls. That said, the one girl we do see is treated more or less as equal, at least by Ender.
236* ''Literature/KushielsLegacy'' zigzags back and forth from Whores, Whores, Whores to this. From a Watsonian perspective, most of the female characters such as Phedre and Melisandre are skilled at manipulation, diplomacy, espionage, and politics. Terre d'Ange has a Queen and they don't discriminate between genders since it's a land of EternalSexualFreedom and [[UnproblematicProstitution prostitution is treated with respect]]. But from a Doylist perspective, they're not exactly equal in gender since most of the D'Angeline female characters we've encountered are [[SexGoddess good at sex]], implying that AllWomenAreLustful, and there's a lack of female warriors. Phedre is a courtesan whose only job is to [[FemmeFataleSpy spy and seduce regardless of gender]] and there are several times when she was raped and tortured. Outside of Terre d'Ange, the women weren't treated very well and prostitutes are treated like second-class citizens. It gets worse when Imriel becomes the POV character and several major female characters including Phedre are demoted to secondary characters.
237* ''Literature/TheKingkillerChronicle'' lands squarely here. Women are not disparaged or overtly forced into roles, but they tend to be in traditional or support positions while men do all the real work. There are no female public figures, traders, crafters, or instructors, but several barmaids and artists. A common criticism of the first book, ''Literature/TheNameOfTheWind'', is that all of the women the protagonist encounters are attractive, and so some attempts were made to rectify this in the sequel, ''Literature/TheWiseMansFear'', which makes some clear attempts to create females to directly equal and occasionally exceed male counterparts, and also some that aren't described as physically attractive. Nevertheless, the males are always more powerful and prominent in the end.
238
239[[AC:Live-Action TV]]
240* ''Series/TheWestWing'' is here. The vast majority of the important characters are male, and one of the select prominent female ones is sometimes known as a "sex kitten". Others include the first lady's Chief of Staff who's then director of legislative affairs, the president's executive secretary, the deputy chief of staff who's Josh's love interest, and a prominent one as press secretary. But at the end of the day, it's the men who are the leaders who most of the action is around.
241* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''. While it shows more women in leadership positions than ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' (including female captains, admirals, and a female Chief Medical Officer), the majority of them are guest stars or minor recurring characters. Of the three women in the main cast at the start of the series, the only one in a combat role was quickly written out when her actress decided to leave the show, unhappy with the way her character was being written. The other two, while influential and highly respected crew members, are both medical professionals who rarely see action, and Counselor Troi is widely considered to be one of the more useless officers. The one time they both had an opportunity to get some action, the scriptwriters had them simply smash some mooks' heads with some convenient tableware, despite the fact that both actors in question are trained fencers. Note that the combat woman was not written as sexist, but more as a one-note character.
242* ''Series/DoctorWho'' tends to fall here more often than not with regards to the Doctor/companion dynamic; the Doctor, a male, is usually the clever, resourceful and heroic one while his female companions tend to play the role of the less-experienced and resourceful sidekick who needs everything explained to them or needs to be rescued from the MonsterOfTheWeek. While the classic series was pretty notorious for this (although the stereotype of the completely useless, whiny DamselInDistress who was only ever good for twisting her ankle and screaming at something is actually less common than you'd think), the new series has tried to move away from this with varying degrees of success.
243* ''Series/{{Merlin|2008}}'' is here, and it's actually one of the more egalitarian/feminist-friendly adaptations of Myth/ArthurianLegend. All the Knights are male, like in the traditional legends, Arthur himself voices some sexist views, and a good chunk of the women met throughout the show are damsels in distress. However, the two female leads, Morgana and Guinevere, are both shown to be capable. Guinevere in particular (who's probably the best and most consistent example of female empowerment here) joins Merlin and Arthur's adventures on many occasions. Morgana's competence goes in and out, but there are still episodes where she can put on a good showing. We also meet other women, like Morgouse and Isolde, who are established warriors, and there's plenty of female villains.
244* ''Franchise/KamenRider'' is at this level. Almost all Kamen Riders are male, while the female characters tend to be either battle support or emotional support to the male heroes. Even if a female has fighting capabilities, they don't manage to have much impact on a battle. There are a handful of female Kamen Riders, but early on they mostly only appeared for one movie or episode, during which they either lost their powers or died.
245** ''Series/KamenRiderKiva'' features Badass {{Action Girl}}s, but none of them are able to effectively fight without the aid of a male character, making them {{Faux Action Girl}}s. They do manage to score a SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome by defeating a villain with a borrowed Kamen Rider system.
246** ''Series/KamenRiderGaim'' is the first series to really buck the trend by featuring a Badass DarkActionGirl Kamen Rider who, for a while, was one of the stronger characters in the show. During her first battle against TheHero in his MidSeasonUpgrade form, she fights him to a standstill but was later implied to have held back. It was only after higher tiers of power were introduced and her HeelFaceTurn that she became a little bit dependent on the more powerful male characters. (That said, one character does note how her motivation is to find someone worthy to give her support to, rather than try to go for the series' prize herself.)
247** Special mention to ''Series/KamenRiderDrive'', which goes out of its way to avoid giving the lead's partner Kiriko a TransformationTrinket. She acts as his HypercompetentSidekick, which begs the obvious question of "If she's so good, why isn't ''she'' Drive?" The answer given was a {{Handwave}} that "She ''tried'', but only a few people are compatible with the Drive tech and she's not one of them." This, combined with Kiriko's {{Chickification}} in the second half of the series, cements the show firmly in this category.
248** ''Series/KamenRiderZeroOne'' is the first series to make a female Rider both a major recurring character and keep her powers throughout, with a storyline largely independent of the protagonist, but even then she spends a good chunk of time under the (male) main villain's thumb.
249** ''Series/KamenRiderSaber'' again has a female Rider as a regular character, establishing her as a cunning ManipulativeBitch -- before her characterization quickly drops off into one-note BigBrotherWorship.
250** ''Series/KamenRiderRevice'' is the first series to approach Almost Perfect Equality and fully have a female Rider as a main character. It features a SiblingTeam and the sister of the group can fight as well as her brothers (or better; she's a karate student), and she has her own storylines as she develops her strength and independence apart from them and as she has a FriendlyEnemy rivalry with the major villainess -- which pays off when [[spoiler:said villainess has a HeelFaceTurn and becomes a Kamen Rider herself, adding a second woman to the roster]].
251* ''Series/{{CSI}}'' and its spinoffs tend to vary on the gender scale. For the past 9 seasons for Las Vegas, the ratio for male and female [=CSIs=] (not counting Detective Brass and TheCoroner Doc Robbins) is 3:2 and when Greg Sanders got promoted, it's 4:2 [[spoiler:until Warrick is killed and no one replaced him]]. The later seasons have Catherine Willows out and bringing Morgan Brody (Ecklie's daughter) and Julie Finlay in which is 3:3. There's a lack of female detectives until Sofia Curtis got promoted to detective but [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome she disappeared in Season 8]]. ''Series/CSIMiami'' started with a similar ratio of 3:2 (not counting the female Coroner Alexx who later left the department) until Megan Donner left the team, making Calleigh Duquesne the only female member of the main CSI team until Natalia Boa Vista joined in. There used to be a female detective (who is Horatio's sister-in-law) but she became a private investigator and Detective Sergeant Frank Tripp seemed to be sole detective in the main team. ''Series/{{CSINY}}'' started with a similar ratio of 2:2 until TheCoroner Sheldon Hawkes took a career shift which is 3:2 and it stayed consistent for 9 seasons. There's also only one main detective (Don Flack) until Jessica Angell joined in [[spoiler:but she got killed]].
252* ''Series/ColdCase'' is a deconstructed case since it focuses on unsolved cases and some of them focused on gender issues (one of the oldest cases deals with woman's suffrage). Detective Lilly Rush is the only female member in the main team but it was stated several times that she was the only female detective in Philadelphia. Or at least, the only female ''homicide'' detective in Philadelphia. Until they introduced other female detectives from other parts of Philly and then, Kat Miller (formerly narcotics) joins the team.
253* ''Series/ThePacific'': Being the SpiritualSuccessor of ''Series/BandOfBrothers'', this show improves in terms of the presence of female characters. But since it's a UsefulNotes/WorldWarII TV series focused on the Pacific campaign, it's expected that they're on the sidelines. However, Sgt. Lena Mae Rigg Basilone is the only female character who made a strong impact as she is the only female marine present in the show and marries John Basilone. The eighth episode focuses on their relationship which, in turn, also shows John's death in Iwo Jima near the end. In the series finale, Lena gives the Medal of Honor to John's parents and appears in the WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue, where it was stated that she helped out in the memorial for her late husband and never remarried until her death.
254* ''Series/BlakesSeven'': Usually is around here. The series has many strong, capable female characters, but has a tendency to leave them OutOfFocus [[BridgeBunnies manning the teleport console]] while the men push the plot along. The exception to this is Servalan, who is always in charge and in control, but she's also the BigBad.
255
256[[AC: Roleplay]]
257* In Roleplay/DinoAttackRPG, the Dino Attack Team itself, along with their rival faction XERRD has no problem hiring men or women, many of them in combat roles. Of course, that said, the majority of redshirts are male, there have only been two female primary characters, and most characters with authority are men. There are no women among the founding members and only six women (Wing, Zenna, Cabin, Fabello, Gromtin, and Mercedes) were known to achieve the ranks of elite agent.
258
259[[AC:TabletopGames]]
260* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' zigzags, but is mostly positioned here. Space Marines, the Primarchs, the Emperor, and at least 3 of the Chaos Gods are male. Most factions employ men for combat. On the other hand, the Adeptus Sororitas are all-female and the Imperial Guard features equal amounts of men and women (not that one would notice from the official minis though). Xenos races are usually more equal and have more visibly female models. When it comes to background, however, women are much more favourably positioned in general, bordering on true equality (sexism is still an issue, but usually presented as something bad that has to be fixed).
261* ''TabletopGame/{{Space 1889}}'': Historical Victorian Society’s attitude is "Know your place, woman!" but the game is a little bit more lenient, so stories are more "men are more equal".
262* ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'' itself goes for equality (meaning characters of both genders are equally flawed). However, either this or "Know your place, woman!" is the attitude that BigBad [[EvilInc Pentex]] strives for--there's a relatively solid glass ceiling in place in the corporation itself while its various subsidiaries push agendas in line with the scale position: The Saturday morning cartoon of OmniTV has the female cast members fixing the breakfast and worrying about the male heroes, King Breweries marketing is mostly targeted at a male demographic with a proudly sexist "Kings' Wenches" hostess campaign and so on.
263
264[[AC:{{Toys}}]]
265* ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'' goes here, primarily as a result of being a boys' toyline that is heavily affected by TheSmurfettePrinciple. Women ''can'' be powerful warriors, but the focus is always on the male characters. Female Toa also seem to be given the least interesting [[MaskOfPower mask powers]], ranging from the BoringButPractical Underwater Breathing to the BlessedWithSuck Mask of Detection (which gives its wearer headaches as she gets closer to the MacGuffin). UsefulNotes/TheBechdelTest is rarely passed. In the early years in particular, the females were portrayed as the calm, gentle ones, while the males displayed much more diversity. This changed as the series progressed.
266
267[[AC:Video Games]]
268* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'':
269** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics'', this seems to be [[GameplayAndStorySegregation more story-based rather than gameplay]], which is more even.
270** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' had mostly male characters, there were a handful of prominent female characters, including 3 female playable characters and a handful of female villains. The kingdom of Troia had an all-female army and was ruled by a group of women. The sequel added several more playable female characters.
271** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' falls squarely here, with the few female characters being strong and reasonably three-dimensional but mostly used for plot devices. Most important [=NPCs=] are male even then. It's also worth pointing out that two of the three female party members have storylines revolving around their feelings for Cloud, and the third has a more neutral story but has a crush on Cloud too. There is a really terrifying female villain but she is literally used as body parts by the male villain, who dismembers her and can act his will through those parts of her body. The two most important female villains are a ditzy blonde 'new recruit' character who screws up everything she tries and needs to get rescued by her male coworkers (and Cloud), and a sexy female executive who gets a comical DesignatedGirlFight and little else, and despite her role in Barret's {{Mangst}} his rivalry is transferred to a male rival for SpaghettiWestern pastiche reasons.
272* ''VideoGame/DragonQuestII'' had three playable characters, two males and a female, which was a step up from the previous game.
273* ''VideoGame/DynastyWarriors'' almost reaches Level 5, with the playable female characters all getting to be plenty badass the same as the males do. But the lack of women in leadership roles or female {{Mook|s}} soldiers holds it back. That said, the franchise ''does'' take place in Ancient China and is a hell of a lot more gender-equal than its [[Literature/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms source material]], so it does very well, all things considered. However, with the exception of Diaochan and Wang Yi, most of the playable female characters are only known as the wife, daughter or sister of several male playable characters and have little contribution to the story.
274* ''Franchise/KingdomHearts''. Most of the original casts are composed of male characters with only six original females[[note]]Kairi, Namine, Xion, Ollete, Larxene, and Aqua[[/note]] out of the characters. And most of them are either irrelevant to the story (Ollette), [[DamselInDistress Damsels in Distress]] (Kairi, Namine, Xion), or follow TheSmurfettePrinciple (Larxene). However, Aqua has been a step in the right direction, being a fully playable ActionGirl and the only one in her PowerTrio to receive the Master rank. While her story does involve her searching for her male friends, it is still a noble cause in itself and she does quite a lot of world-saving of her own along the way, with Xion and Kairi following along in III and the Re:Mind DLC respectively.
275* Most installments of ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' go here. Zelda is more capable than the average DamselInDistress, but at the end of the day, it's always Link saving her from the male BigBad. Side quests and subplots involve every combination of genders imaginable, but again, it's always Link, a man, who ultimately saves the day--and even there, women are noticeably more likely to be damsels in distress than quest givers or troublemakers.
276* Many FightingGame franchises, [[Franchise/StreetFighter especially]] [[VideoGame/{{Tekken}} those]] [[VideoGame/FatalFury established]] in the early-to-mid 90's, have a male-to-female character ratio of about 8:2, and the storylines generally reflect this. Female fighting game characters also tend to fall victim to {{Chickification}} in non-video-game spinoffs, such as in ''Anime/StreetFighterIITheAnimatedMovie'' where Cammy is BrainwashedAndCrazy and Chun Li wins one fight... but winds up in a coma.
277* In both ''VideoGame/InazumaEleven'' videogames and manga/anime, there are girls who play soccer (especially in the second game, where almost every team has one or two females on it, and there are the Osaka Gals too). However, the boys have far more focus than their female counterparts and the only two girls who have joined the Raimon are not some of the strongest members (Touko is decent, but Rika is severely underutilized and barely scored any goal). Of course, this is only plot-wise, as you can make an all-female team in the games if you want to and CurbStompBattle rivals with a good training.
278* Most ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' installments are equal for player characters, with the option to play as a male or female, and Gym Leaders, who tend to have an even split between genders. However, the female Pokemon professors in ''VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite'' and ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield'' are the only women to hold the position and your starter Pokemon is more likely to be male than female. The Pokemon themselves are equal in terms of stats bar ''VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver,'' which had a hidden randomized varied stats mechanic that always made Pokemon with a higher attack stat male. This was dropped the next generation.
279* ''Franchise/MassEffect'' comes close to being a gender-equal paradise. From a Watsonian perspective, this vibe is definitely given. Almost every major species in the universe have long done away with traditional gender roles, and women serve in every position of the Human Systems Alliance and Quarian militaries in-game. The two exceptions are the salarians and krogan, who both restrict the roles of their females for reproductive reasons. However, from a ''Doylist'' perspective, there's still some work needed. Most BridgeBunnies are female. Your MissionControl in the second game onwards is female...and also a sexy RobotGirl. When rape is brought up as a topic, it's usually framed as male-on-female. It took several games for female versions of many of the "egalitarian" races to show up. There's minor stuff too, like many instances of the DoggedNiceGuy trope, but the real sexism issue are the asari--who are so problematic an issue that they needed to be moved to a different folder on this page.
280* ''Franchise/DeadSpace'' features several women in the supporting cast. Unfortunately, they almost universally serve as damsels in distress (Nicole in the first game, Lexine in ''Extraction'', Ellie in the third), or as MissionControl (Kendra in the first game, [[spoiler:who turns out to be TheMole and is ultimately killed by the [[FinalBoss Hive Mind]]]]). ''VideoGame/DeadSpaceExtraction'', ''VideoGame/DeadSpace2'', and the iOS version make noble efforts to include genuine {{Action Girl}}s like Karen Howell, Ellie Langford, and [[spoiler: Vandal, AKA Karrie Norton]], who is actually [[spoiler: the playable protagonist]] of the iOS edition. However, she's a rather blatant case of [[spoiler: SamusIsAGirl]], and Ellie Langford--despite establishing herself as a total badass in the second game--undergoes a massive case of BadassDecay in between games, turning her into a FauxActionGirl. ''VideoGame/DeadSpace3'' features a (long dead) female admiral as well as a female EDF pilot aboard the ''Eudora'' who gets minimal screen time before [[spoiler: being killed off]]. ''WesternAnimation/DeadSpaceAftermath'' is probably the best the series gets when it comes to female characters since it stars an absolutely badass ActionGirl and features multiple other minor female characters who prove themselves to be just as capable as the men.
281* ''VideoGame/{{Bully}}'' has the males dominating the plot of the game, with the [[TheSmurfettePrinciple lone females]] of each cliques being treated as mere {{Love Interest|s}} for the lead male, and unable to even put up any fight when they are being attacked.
282* ''VideoGame/SamuraiWarriors'': ''Warriors'' has ''fourteen'' female playable characters as of ''Samurai Warriors: The Spirit of Sanada'' and the recent games have individual storylines for some of them (such as Koshosho, Lady Hayakawa and Gracia Hosokawa). Unlike ''Dynasty Warriors'', several female characters do make contributions on the battlefield and they have female {{Mooks}} who are guarding them. However, in history, the women of the UsefulNotes/SengokuPeriod rarely played significant roles except a few (such as Kai, Ii Naotora, Gracia among others) which is why their storylines in the games are mostly fictional. With ''Samurai Warriors 5'' being a SoftReboot, most of the characters are cut off meaning there are only four female characters (No, Oichi, Sena, and Mitsuki) who are playable.
283* ''VideoGame/SagaFrontier2'' is set in a FantasyCounterpartCulture of TheMiddleAges. Among the nobility, women are pretty much marriage pawns. The only woman to do ''anything'' political on her own steam is the villainous Nicolette, and she's largely an ineffective schemer who started a war because of a petty grudge. There ''are'' women in the national armies in large numbers, but no noblewomen (except for RebelliousPrincess Primiera, who left home to become a digger) warriors are seen. There's much more equality among [[AdventurerArchaeologist diggers]], and the main character of the third generation is Virginia Knights, but even then, both female diggers we see getting married or pregnant settle down to become full-time mothers.
284* The first ''VideoGame/{{Dishonored}}'' has a handful of female characters, most of whom do very little; The women allied to you don't participate in planning, most neutral women are maids, and the one villainess there is merely providing funding to the villains. The empress is killed in the first 5 minutes and her daughter does little else than getting kidnapped. The DLC is a bit better, as the main villain faction consists only of witches and Daud's second-in-command is a woman. Interestingly, the developers realized after the games' release how awkward their representation of women was, and the games' two sequels both have female protagonists, and ''2'' in particular has plenty of female characters as allies, mooks, and villains, moving it to the "almost equal" tier.
285* ''VideoGame/MuramasaTheDemonBlade'': While badass female chacters do show up throughout the game, there is a disparity between the two player characters. Both Kisuke (male) and Momohime (female) are skilled swordsmen, but Kisuke's abilities appear to be natural while Momohime's prowess comes from being posessed by the male ronin spirit Jinkuro.
286
287[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
288* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' started at this level but changed in later seasons.
289* Franchise/{{Transformers}}: The number of female characters with a significant role in most series can be counted on one or both hands, whereas the males always outnumber them, but the females are usually competent.
290[[/folder]]
291
292!Level 5: Almost Perfect Equality
293Stories that portray both sexes as an equal or are at least trying to balance DamselInDistress with ActionGirl. Both men and women may be TheProtagonist. It's almost impossible to achieve a perfect balance of both sexes, especially in stories aimed at one specific audience (like {{Shonen|Demographic}} or {{Shoujo|Demographic}})--sometimes girls don't get full respect only because the story is just too focused on boys and vice versa. That's why many of the examples here are works that, while it is still impossible to tell whether they portray both sexes as completely equal, are just more balanced than Level 4 or 6.
294
295[[folder:Examples]]
296
297[[AC:{{Anime}} & {{Manga}}]]
298* In ''Manga/ShugoChara'', later on they [[spoiler:let the boys transform]] but occasionally focus issues come up. [[spoiler:Nagihiko gets focus but he's Nagihiko!]]
299* ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureStoneOcean'': The protagonist and two of her closest allies are female (and ''tough'', [[WorldOfBadass even by JoJo standards]]).
300* ''Anime/CodeGeass''. Although the two most important characters in the show are male, there are female heroes that manage to be just as cool and competent as them, or even moreso. There are also females in every major group and organization in the story (Ashford Academy; the Brittanian royal family, the Britanian army, the Black Knights, three of the story's four engineers, etc.) whom everyone accepts and who seem to be equal to their male counterparts in plot importance and what they do, or sometimes even better.
301* ''Literature/{{Slayers}}'' has a 2:2 ratio between male and female main characters for most of its run, though it varies from arc to arc. In every version of ''Slayers'' -- the novels, manga, TV series, movies, and [[OriginalVideoAnimation OVAs]] -- the protagonist is an extraordinarily powerful young woman. No one seems to think it odd for a woman to have adventures within the setting, either.
302* Most ''Franchise/{{Digimon}}'' series end up here. While the treatment of the human female characters vary depending on the season, the Digital World and the Digimon that live in it seem to have no concept of gender roles. In fact, male Digimon can evolve into female Digimon and vice versa.
303* ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'' has both males and females working with NERV and the other organizations. There are also both male and female Eva pilots, and Shinji's mother was a great scientist. Likewise, each and every character, regardless of gender, had plenty of personal issues in their lives which showed [[DysfunctionJunction how screwed up they are]].
304* ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'' fits here, tentatively. There are many more male characters than females, but the female characters you do see in the various ensembles (especially Yoko and Nia, and Adiane on the villains' side) are perfectly independent and capable--with a few FauxActionGirl exceptions.
305* ''Manga/SoulEater'' has a pretty well-rounded cast of both male and female. The female characters (both meisters and weapons) are just as capable as their male counterparts on the battlefield. All the main characters have had their own SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome.
306* ''Literature/{{Baccano}}'', despite being a gangster anime set primarily in the 1930s, actually seems to treat its female characters very well -- female characters are allowed in roles about as diverse as the male characters, and some are very capable fighters, who can and do stand up to the men.
307* ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'' ensures a fairly stable gender equality ratio, as men and women are frequently shown to be equally competent in terms of tactical and physical fighting skill. For every badass State Alchemist like Roy Mustang, there's an equally skilled BadassNormal like Riza Hawkeye.
308** Making it more complex: out of the whole cast in which 20+ alchemists are seen there are a grand total of two female alchemists and neither of them are State Alchemists. That said, they're not state alchemists because they don't want to be; they would be eagerly welcomed if they chose to join the military and one of them is, in fact, scouted by Bradly himself and turned him down.
309** Still more so: Izumi Curtis will, loud and proud, declare herself a HouseWife while beating the fuck out of a Homunculus to save her student, the male protagonist.
310* The vast majority of Creator/HayaoMiyazaki's works treat female characters as equal to their male counterparts, if not superior in one way or another. This is quite intentional on the part of Miyazaki, an avowed feminist. To Miyazaki's credit, when there ''is'' any clear superiority of female over male (for example, it's heavily implied that only females can perform magic in ''Anime/KikisDeliveryService''), it's never treated as a failing on anyone's part; that's just the way it is.
311* ''Anime/MobileSuitZetaGundam'' fits this category, having quite a lot of female pilots, most of which can fight just as well as any male. If any woman is defeated in combat, it's more than likely due to having a less than powerful mobile suit. For bonus points, one of the greatest themes of Zeta is the dissonant and controlling relationships between men and women. [[TheCasanova Paptimus Scirocco]], for example, manages to manipulate so many women that [[FaceHeelTurn one actually defects from his opposition]]. Examples of misogyny in the series cause in-universe reactions that range from outrage to the women actually turning it around on the men. Summarized aptly by Reccoa Londe:
312-->''"Men are perhaps born to fight each other. And women are perhaps fated to be their tools."''
313** To make things more complex: [[spoiler:the aforementioned woman that [[FaceHeelTurn defected to the Titans]] was Reccoa, who did it either because Scirocco manipulated her or because she didn't want to be a tool for men, even though that is essentially what she became when she turned over to the Titans. Emma calls her out on this, as she herself defected from her original faction [[DefectorFromDecadence for better reasons]]]].
314* ''Anime/TurnAGundam'', also directed by Tomino, fits into this category as well. Women are shown to be equals with men in politics, military competence, and society in general. This is more true to the advanced Moonrace, where they seemed to have taken GenderIsNoObject to heart. Though even Earth, whose inhabitants consider the notion of a woman leading a country as a novelty at best, isn't that far behind despite the [[DaysOfFuturePast 19th Century/World War I]] atmosphere.
315* Though there are relatively fewer female characters in ''Webcomic/HetaliaAxisPowers'', the ones that ''do'' show prominently generally fall into this. Hungary is shown to be just as competent as, if not even ''manlier'' than the males while others such as Liechtenstein and Belarus are by ''no'' means submissive pushovers. There's also an overall even-handedness to how gender is treated, even on the side of the males (case in point: [[RealMenWearPink Finland]], [[AmbiguouslyGay Poland]], and [[NonActionGuy Austria]]). The same is true for the [[RuleSixtyThree Nyotalia]] version of the characters.
316* ''Manga/{{Bakuman}}'': While the editorial department is entirely male, the female manga writers are not presented as inferior to their male counterparts, and are able to establish series in ''Magazine/ShonenJump'' and keep them running. While Mashiro and Takagi are once admonished for [[PanderingToTheBase trying to take ideas from (mostly female) fan mail]], it's pointed out that this is because the female readers are a PeripheryDemographic that, however, wouldn't want a genre change. While Iwase is sometimes thought of as petty in-universe and among the fanbase for pursuing manga as an extension of her rivalry with Takagi, Takagi is ultimately forced to acknowledge her skill, particularly when his and Mashiro's manga ''Tanto'' gets outperformed by her and [[TheRival Nizuma's]] ''+Natural''.
317* For all of its flaws, ''Manga/{{Boruto}}'' learned a lot from the mistakes ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' made with the female characters, as the power ratio between the genders is more balanced. Instead of being presented as {{Faux Action Girl}}s, the young ladies are shown being capable of battle even before finishing the Ninja Academy. First villain was in fact Sumire, a girl who came close enough to destroy Konoha. Then there is Sarada, the main heroine, she is the one who has the first solo battle, before everyone, including the lead. Sarada is more active in her role than her mother and we certainly didn't need to wait for her to become a full ActionGirl just after some TimeSkip. And speaking of her mother, Sakura of all female characters is the most active with her ninja duty; the woman raised her daughter on her own, is the head of several hospitals within the Five Great Ninja Countries, and still goes into missions. She is also the only kunoichi one from her generation to be shown having a full solo fight. And generally speaking, the girls have same wide range of jutsu as the boys and are pivotal to the story more than before.
318* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing'' actually has a one-to-one gender parity among the principal cast; even the women who aren't pilots are still important to the plot, and in fact it could easily be argued that female lead Relena is more critical to the story than male lead Heero. One character does come off as a HeManWomanHater, but it's due to a combination of ValuesDissonance and FreudianExcuse, and he eventually gets over this attitude. And though the Gundams are only ever operated by men[[note]] Barring a single TakingTheBullet scene at the end of the series[[/note]], TeamMom Lucrezia Noin manages to keep up with all five Gundam Pilots while using a mass production machine--for that matter, at one point TheRival Zechs implies that she's a better pilot than him, saying that she always held back to make him look better.
319* ''Manga/PokemonAdventures''. Even with the main characters for most generations having a TwoGuysAndAGirl ratio, the girls are shown to be just as well-developed and strong as the guys and the secondary cast also has a healthy amount of females in various roles. Yellow, Crystal, and Platinum, all girls, even get to star in their own arcs.
320* ''Manga/{{Berserk}}'' fits into this category, more or less. If a girl isn't a bonafide ActionGirl (and [[TheSmurfettePrinciple there is only one true action girl in the series]]) then she is at least competent enough not to have to depend on a guy to save her each and every time; that, and every major female character, no matter her physical strength, has contributed something to the plot or arc. Not only that, but [[RapeAsDrama anything bad that can happen to a woman]] [[DoubleStandardRapeMaleOnMale can also happen to a man]], [[MenAreTheExpendableGender and vice]] [[NoWomansLand versa]] (and quite a lot of bad things happen in-story).
321* ''Literature/{{Shiki}}'' is a rather complex case. On the one hand, the characters clearly live in a patriarchal society, given that it's a traditionalist rural village in Japan. On the other, individual examples of powerful women abound, both among the humans and vampires (and on the flip side, there's a fair amount of ineffectual men), although it is true that the ''most'' powerful female character is also probably the closest thing the show has to a central antagonist. Furthermore, both males and females participate in the climactic battle at the end, seemingly with no real discrepancies in gender roles.
322* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan.'' There are plenty of male and female characters of very diverse roles and levels of relevance. Mikasa, the adoptive sister of the protagonist (a role that would be all too easy to accidentally turn into a FauxActionGirl), is considered TheAce of their class, and it definitely shows in combat, whereas the protagonist, Eren, is specifically noted to have little outstanding skill outside of his ''massive'' {{Determinator}} streak. The various Red and Mauve Shirts are also of very assorted gender, but this doesn't stop them from having equally [[CruelAndUnusualDeath Cruel And Unusual Deaths]] at the hands of the titans.
323* ''Manga/HollowFields'', being written for all demographics, takes special care in regarding both genders with equal capability and importance. There are more women than men in the setting, with the protagonist being a female, but this doesn't stop the male characters from playing crucial roles in the story. Almost everyone is capable of [[MadScientist mad science]], and the sole exception is an artificial creation designed solely for watchkeeping (and has an ambiguous gender). The female Engineers, despite being portrayed as {{Hot Teacher}}s, are not played for {{fanservice}}, and are capable of being just as [[SadisticTeacher sadistic]] and [[EvilTeacher evil]] as their male counterparts. There are [[DistressedDude characters of both]] [[DamselInDistress genders in distress]], and either have a [[JustifiedTrope valid reason]] for being distressed, are still capable of helping their rescuer, or are an acceptable target. [[DefangedHorrors Considering what kind of a story this is]], both genders are also susceptible to a FateWorseThanDeath if they don't do what it takes to survive.
324%%* ''Franchise/{{Patlabor}}''%%
325* ''Manga/CardCaptorSakura'' has well-developed characters split between both the genders; Syaoran, Touya, Yukito, Yue, Kero, and Eriol as the male leads and Sakura, Tomoyo, Meilin, and Mizuki as the female leads. The main character, Sakura Kinomoto has a well-defined personality and lives up to her reputation as both MagicalGirl and ActionGirl. Accompanying her is the male lead Li Syaoran, who acts as TheLancer during her quest to capture cards along with her best friend Tomoyo who, despite being shown to be a NiceGirl at her core, also loves to videotape Sakura and loves to dress up her best friend just for her to view the results.
326* ''Anime/PrincessTutu''. Despite being a MagicalGirl show which sometimes leans on Women Are Better Than Men, the two female MainCharacters and two male MainCharacters all have well-defined personalities and important roles to play with. Oh, and they're ballet dancers including the two male characters [[RealMenWearPink who are proven to be badass]] since one of them is an actual WarriorPrince and the other [[spoiler:is a RealityWarper who is a descendent of the narrator and GreaterScopeVillain, Drosselmeyer]]. And let's not forget the ladies, Ahiru and Rue/Kraehe who made the ballet dances more badass.
327* ''Anime/{{Shirobako}}'': There's no glass ceiling in this one since this is based on RealLife experience (except for one character who made a sexist comment on the main character but he got better). You get to see male and female workers drawing for character designs, key animation, 3D animation, editing, etc. The five female leads were only concerned about how they can advance their career. Despite that we never saw some female directors or producers; Aoi Miyamori really aspires to produce her own anime in the future. The animes that the studio produced are {{Moe}} but the staff clearly wants to make a great anime that would make their audiences enjoy and not for money.
328* ''Manga/BlackClover'' has Noelle, Vanessa, Charmy, Grey, Nero, Mimosa, Mereoleona, and many other women that are as competent as the men of the franchise and sometimes stronger than them, in the case of Mereoleona. While some common shonen tropes are present, such as the main male characters getting most part of the focus, the development of the female characters has as much love as theirs - something that resulted in the [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/blackclover/images/c/c8/Chapter_211.png/revision/latest?cb=20190708170441 third popularity poll (warning for spoilers in the picture!)]] where, out of ten characters, five were women and five were men.
329* In ''Manga/BloomIntoYou'', while the OfficialCouple, the BetaCouple, and the {{Tritagonist}} are female, there are a surprising number of males for a YuriGenre manga. Two members of the student council are male, as is the acting instructor who helps coach them in preparation for the SchoolPlay. A good portion of the faculty in Tohmi East High School is male, although the only one who gets much screentime is a woman.
330* The anime ''Anime/CardfightVanguard!!'' gives us no shortage of competent or plot-relevant female characters. One of them includes Misaki, one of the main characters, ends up spending the first two seasons developing her skills as a Cardfighter just as much as main character Aichi, to the point where she has a perfect record by the third season and is just as often to take command of her team if need be. This can also be shown in the cards themselves, as almost every character uses a good amount of male and female Units in their decks.
331
332[[AC:ComicBooks]]
333* Franchise/WonderWoman is an interesting case. Originally created precisely as an empowerment example, she is considered today to be one of Creator/DCComics' "Trinity" of main heroes, the equal of Franchise/{{Superman}} and Franchise/{{Batman}}. Her supporting cast also features many strong (and some funny) female characters. ''However'', her main background element, The Amazons, have, [[DependingOnTheWriter over the years]], lost their scientific and philosophical achievements, and been in fact reinvented as man-haters. See ''ComicBook/AmazonsAttack'' for a particularly gross example.
334
335[[AC:FanWorks]]
336* ''[[Fanfic/UltimateSpiderWoman Ultimate Spider-Woman: Change With The Light]]'' stars a full-fledged ActionGirl who gets into fights with supervillains on a regular basis and always gives as good as she gets. Most of her RoguesGallery is male, although every single one of them WouldHitAGirl and have no problems going after Spider-Woman with everything they have. In her civilian identity, Mary Jane Watson also has to deal with the same kind of bad luck, money problems, and bad grades that frequently plague male {{Triple Shifter}}s.
337** ''[[Fanfic/UltimateSleepwalker Ultimate Sleepwalker: The New Dreams]]'' doesn't apply quite as much, given that the protagonist is male, but several of his enemies are {{Dark Action Girl}}s and Sleepwalker has no compunctions about hitting them just as hard as he would any of his male enemies. The female characters in Rick Sheridan's and Sleepwalker's supporting casts also get a considerable amount of development in their own right.
338* Creator/Iron117Prime's work falls into this. Almost all female characters in said stories are usually [[ActionGirl Action Girls]] with consistent power levels and relevancy, and the ones that aren't relegated to frontline action are important to either protagonists or antagonists, or heavily plot-relevant. A common archetype in these fics is a character who wants to do more for the protagonists and they're almost always female with the stories more than willing to give them said moments.
339
340[[AC:{{Film}}]]
341* ''Film/StarshipTroopers'' shows men and women as being perfectly equal, to the point of showering together and sharing sleeping quarters.
342
343[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
344* In ''Literature/HarryPotter'', the wizarding world seems to be more gender-equal than ours; there have been female Ministers for Magic, American presidents, Aurors, headmistresses of Hogwarts, and female Quidditch players for centuries. In fact, two of the four Hogwarts founders were women. According to WordOfGod, magic is an equalizer for factors that normally kept women down in society and since the global Wizarding World is so small and beholden to the {{Masquerade}}, they don’t really have the option of being choosy about who is or isn’t allowed to hold a high place in society. Most of the important characters are still men, although there are several strong and ''very'' important female characters (and two villains we love to hate-Dolores Umbridge and Bellatrix Lestrange). The fifth book in particular added several prominent female characters that are fan favorites, including Luna Lovegood, Tonks (who was also the first female Auror identified on page), and the aforementioned female villains. The two people outside of Harry who are most directly involved with both the downfalls of Voldemort are women as well. His mother, Lily, sacrificed herself for him which caused him to “die” the first go around and Narcissa Malfoy later lied to his face, knowing it would kill him, to save Draco.
345* ''Literature/WarriorCats'': The Clan society is set up for almost perfect gender equality with both toms and she-cats receiving equal training and equal opportunity to become medicine cat, deputy, or Clan leader. Not to mention that there has never been a point in the series where there were no female leaders, all the {{Action Girl}}s throughout the series, and how later deputies have been female. The only difference between toms and she-cats is that she-cats have to nurse their kits for six months, which is more a biological necessity than discrimination. On top of that, there has been an almost equal number of male and female MainCharacters. The only real question that has come up on occasion is whether or not female cats in positions of authority should be allowed to have kits. There's no explicit rule against it, but it is not often done because it is believed that having kits will distract and incapacitate the she-cat, especially while nursing. [[spoiler:Leafstar challenges this idea in ''[=SkyClan=]'s Destiny'', citing the warrior code rule "The word of the Clan leader is the warrior code" as the reason: she's the leader, so she gets to say what's okay and not, and she says that it's okay for female leaders to have kits.]] There's still a lot of [[BrokenBase controversy]] among the fans as to whether there's sexism in the series, though, with the 15:4 ratio of male to female leaders from the prequel super editions to the present often cited, or the way that the series tends to follow FemalesAreMoreInnocent, with one female villain [[spoiler:whose FreudianExcuse involved being dumped by a tom]] and another minor one who got a GenderBender thanks to ContinuitySnarl to ''many'' male villains.
346* The ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' series mostly falls in this category. The Star Kingdom of Manticore, the (People's) Republic of Haven, and most other Honorverse societies are more or less perfectly gender-equal; even the {{Space Marine}}s have many female members
347** Grayson is a completely different matter, though getting to be less so as their alliance with Manticore grows. Of course, [[LampshadeHanging this only serves to underscore the gender equality of other star nations]].
348* ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' is all over the shop on this. Both sexes are equally stupid. The women ''are'' CloserToEarth, but also tend to be nagging shrews, unapologetic misandrists, ending up in chains with some man lording it over them, or all three. Men, on the other hand, are all idiots and deserve to be abused. Witness [[spoiler:Mat]] being raped at knifepoint, [[DoubleStandardRapeFemaleOnMale which is considered hilarious]]. In ''The Wheel Of Time'', all male members of the MageSpecies are doomed ''by'' their powers to [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity go violently insane]], and so have to be "[[DePower gentled]]" before they can do (much) harm. As a result, the balance of power is shifted way over towards the female side, and many women are convinced of their inherent superiority (in fact, most men are inherently stronger in magic as well as physicality.) So, as noted, it arrives here not because of gender parity, but because both sexes are equally sexist. Two Wrongs Make A Balance.
349* ''[[Literature/TheMillenniumTrilogy The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo]]'' depicts a lot of evil men, but Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist share time as the focus character and are both skilled.
350* Megan Whalen Turner’s ''Literature/TheQueensThief'' books are pretty even on gender equality. While the majority of the major cast is male in terms of numbers, Eddis and Attolia are both female and hands-down two of the wicked smartest characters in the series. Gen is arguably smarter than them, but he needed both of their smarts to accomplish most of [[GambitIndex his crazy gambits]]. Even stupidity (when it shows up, which isn’t often) is distributed pretty well proportionally between male and female characters (for example: Nahuseresh and Costis, for males, and Hanaktos’ daughter for females). Even the important deities are evenly split between male and female, as with Moira and Eugenides. Irrespective of gender, most of the main characters in this series are pretty freakin’ ''badass''. This is especially impressive considering the setting is based on ancient-to-medieval Greece, and even the culture within the books isn’t incredibly egalitarian. The characters are defying their own universe to be gender-equal.
351* The ''Literature/SwordOfTruth'' series is here in regards to the characters and [[AuthorTract philosophy]], though most of the societies are heavily unequal in one way or another. The [[TheEmpire House and Rahl and the Imperial Order]] are ruled by {{straw misogynist}}s, where women are considered [[HeirClubForMen breeding stock]] or [[TheWomenAreSafeWithUs worse]]. The Midlands is an odd example: It's a patriarchal society where women wear their hair cut short as a sign of submission to men, but the ruling Confessors wear their hair long as a sign of defiance and [[OffingTheOffspring kill all of their male children at birth]] because they don't think men have the "[[WomenAreWiser unique compassion of a woman]]" to resist abusing [[CompellingVoice their powers]], thereby placing them at either the far end of female domination or a kind of isolated Full Gender Separation within a non-separated society. Westland is probably the most equal, with women able to rise to the highest positions (councilors), laws in place to protect women and harshly punish rapists, and none of the obvious social restrictions that women in the Midlands live under.
352* ''Literature/OldKingdom'' Women and men are unquestioned equals in the Old Kingdom, with nobody commenting on any particular gender fulfilling any role (except for the Clayr, who are almost always women). Lirael notes in "Goldenhand" that there is no distinction even between male and female clothing in the Old Kingdom, save for underclothes. In Ancelstierre, traditional gender norms seem to have more sway, with all of the soldiers and all named leaders being male and Nicholas mentioning "debs" or debutants, hinting at more traditional English norms. However, it is mentioned in "Abhorsen" that some of Sabriel's old school friends have become powerful in their own right and Sabriel, who herself grew up in Ancelstierre, is never shown to have qualms about gender roles.
353* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' falls squarely here for the entire run of the series. Of the main characters, only two are girls, but both are [[ActionGirl Action Girls]], and they're never treated as any less important than the boys.
354* For the most part, ''Literature/{{Gone}}'' falls into this category. It got some accusations of a Level 4 early on, but the later books fixed it, putting it here.
355* ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'' features an unusual cross between this category and Full Gender Separation. In human society, there are very strict rules on which things men can and cannot do, and equally strict rules for women. For example, women are not allowed to be soldiers or know how to fight, but men are forbidden from learning to read or write. Both genders occupy roles absolutely essential for the function of any society and have equal importance in the plot.
356* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' says hi, and is surprisingly gender-equal for being written in the 1950s. Each and every story has both boys and girls embarking on important fantasy adventures together, and they all actively contribute on a fairly equal level. The main imbalance is that the girls are usually kept away from battle situations, but modern adaptations tend to fix that and there's no reason to believe that the actual Narnians don't have women fighting in their ranks. In fact, the movies blatantly show female Narnians in battle, such as a whole unit of female centaurs acting as the archers in ''The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe'' film. There's also no shortage of powerful female villains in addition to male ones.
357* The ''Literature/MalazanBookOfTheFallen'' has both men and women serving in the military in all kinds of positions, including leading armies, and for most of the story, the Malazan Empire is ruled by an Empress who made her way to the throne through skills and cunning. And even in more gender-segregated societies like that of the Tiste Edur, who have no warrior women while men are almost exclusively warriors and have more political clout, the women on the other hand have a lot more say-so in other areas starting from familial matters and going to matters of sorcery, with only the Warlock King having more sorcerous clout than the matriarchs of the noble families (even though both genders seem to be equally likely to have magical affinities). In fact, those families have both matriarchs and patriarchs. Gender equality through most--and possibly even all--cultures in the setting is, per WordOfGod, [[http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/2vnkyp/rfantasy_exclusive_authorial_intent_discussion/ intentional]].
358* Dorne in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' averts the HeirClubForMen where the eldest child, regardless of gender, is the first to inherit and openly accepts women to be ActionGirl. They're also tolerant of same-sex relationships which made other Westerosi nobles view them as TheSavageSouth. These practices were brought by the Rhoynar Queen Nymeria who married Mors Martell to unite the region under their rule. However, on the personal side, Arianne Martell suspects that her father is passing her inheritance to her younger brother, Quentyn, [[spoiler:which got her starting a coup to reclaim her birthright except it failed and she found out that her father is planning to marry her to Viserys Targaryen as part of their family's revenge to help Targaryens reclaim the throne and to destroy the Lannisters for killing their relatives and this could make her queen if it succeeded. Though Viserys died [[TooDumbToLive for insulting Khal Drogo]], she's still heiress of Dorne and Quentyn is the one continuing the plan by wooing to Dany. But when Dany suddenly left Mereen after riding Drogon, Quentyn tried to tame her other two dragons but got burnt into a crisp]].
359* ''Literature/TheSecretsOfTheImmortalNicholasFlamel'' has a boy and girl twin as its MainCharacters, both stated to be equally powerful. When the BigBad is finally revealed, it is a male and female duo [[spoiler:Isis and Osiris]]--with neither one taking superiority. The Flamels feature prominently with both Nicholas and Perenelle being renowned for their battle prowess. There are also plenty of {{Battle Couple}}s as well as various two males and two females pairings to balance it out. Although it seems the ultimate BigGood is a male--Abraham the Mage--the fifth and sixth books reveal that his wife is equally as responsible for the way the story has turned out.
360* ''Literature/{{Outlander}}'' usually trends to this and level 4. The 18th century isn't the safest time for a woman and there are already several times where the main female characters are raped or nearly raped though there were male characters who were victims of rape or AttemptedRape. But then the female POV protagonist, Claire, saved many people several times thanks to her 20th-century medical knowledge as a doctor. [[spoiler:Her daughter, Brianna, is capable of defending herself, thanks for her Scottish hotbloodedness, and despite that she herself got raped, she got back at her rapist and finally killed him by shooting him on the head.]]
361* ''Literature/ThePrioryOfTheOrangeTree'' has plenty of social conflict, but it stems from class issues, international tensions, and religious differences. Neither male nor female characters are subject to GenderScoff, and women being knights, warriors, and rulers is treated as completely unremarkable. The story is a feminist take on the various tales of Saint George and the Dragon, so the country that was founded by the George analogue, Galian, has a little more difficulty--Galian's love Cleolind was subject to {{Chickification}} by the religion of Virtudom, and there is also some SlutShaming (but it's also indicated that chastity is a valued trait for both sexes, not just women). This is universal across the various nations and there is no indication that equality between the sexes hasn't always been the default.
362* Most ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novels are more or less here. The Watch become an equal opportunity employer from ''Literature/MenAtArms'', the witches and wizards are treated as seperate but equal (although both secretly believe they're actually better), and while a lot of Discworld societies are sexist, this is a viewpoint that female characters almost always defy.
363* ''Literature/{{Quarters}}'': The series has women completely equal to men, at least in both Shkodar and Havalkeen, where the stories are set. Many take positions of power, such as top government officials and military officers (along with guards or foot soldiers) with no sign of societal bars against this.
364
365[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
366* The crew of Serenity in ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' appears this way. Zoe, the first mate, is just as respected as Captain Mal, and perfectly capable of leading if he is indisposed. Also, no bones are made at all in the show that she's an ActionGirl, nor is her NonActionGuy husband treated as being any less of a man just because his wife could kick his ass.
367* Colonial society in the rebooted ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'' appears to be this, more or less. Men and women participate essentially equally in both government and the military (the President is a woman for most of the series, and the head of the Fleet is a man, but the Quorum of Twelve is mixed and there are high-ranking officers of both sexes).
368** In some cases, they're even more open-minded than modern society. For instance, public restrooms, at least on Galactica, are unisex. Also, in one episode Sam mentions to Apollo that Kara proposed marriage to him, and there is no indication that a woman proposing to a man is unusual in their society.
369** The original ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|1978}}'' hovers between this and Type 4. While most women are relegated to support roles; several get to [[TookALevelInBadass upgrade to full kickass Viper pilots]]. One of the best pilots in the fleet, Sheba, is female, and she easily holds her own against her male counterparts, even commanding an elite squadron. Females are the minority on the Council, but they are easily as formidable as the men, in some cases even more so. One, Siress Belloby, even manages to cow Adama of all people.
370* ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' usually crops up around here. Sometimes various series can be a borderline example, especially due to the lead character inevitably being male. However, the lead females of the franchise still fight on the front alongside their male counterparts, still will save others as well as be saved, and sometimes are either [[WomenAreWiser more level-headed]] or more intelligent by comparison. And while it's more on the lower end of this part of the scale, it's still very near equality. It should be noted that males always outnumber females on ranger teams and women are rarely the focus character of the season. This can be attributed to the {{Sentai}} footage where the red ranger is usually treated as the series main character. It's fair to say non-red male rangers can get just as little focus, as well.
371* ''Series/ForAllMankind'': Because Russia managed to land a man on the Moon first, the Space Race started to heat up for America; especially after the second Russian to land on the Moon [[SamusIsAGirl revealed they were a woman]] on national TV. This prompted President Nixon to follow suit and convince NASA to create Female Astronauts, with some of them being NASA employees, the wives of Apollo Astronauts, or were members of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_13 The Mercury 13 Program]]. The female Astronauts along with female NASA employees are shown to be just as capable as their male counterparts. By 1974, America would pass the Equal Rights Amendment following seven successful Apollo missions.
372* ''Series/{{JAG}}'': While the men are more numerous, the women are no less capable.
373* For the most part, ''{{Series/Scandal}}'' is this. The President is male, but the protagonist, Olivia Pope, is female (and black), and is generally regarded as one of the most powerful people in Washington in large part because of her [[TheChessmaster Chessmastery]]. The ensemble cast has a good mix of males and females and does not generally favor one over the other.
374* ''Series/{{Castle|2009}}'' tends to come close to this. Kate Beckett does tend to have the edge over Richard Castle as both a detective and an action hero, although this can be explained both by her being more driven and focused personality-wise than his more flippant and irreverent nature and by her being a trained professional detective as opposed to him being an untrained mystery writer. He's also no slouch at either solving crimes or [[LetsGetDangerous getting dangerous when necessary.]]
375* ''Series/LegendOfTheSeeker'' has a good mix of genders, and no clear gender distinctions or roles. The only exception is Rothenburg, a strict patriarchy that tightly controls women with the "Law of Right and Good". [[StrawMisogynist Naturally]], they're on the evil side.
376* ''Series/OnceUponATime'' is a FeministFantasy but still features several prominent male characters in addition to the females. For one Snow White and Prince Charming are a BattleCouple, their daughter and grandson are prominent players, and the supporting cast is made up of a near equal group of males and females. This extends to the villains too--expect to see an equal amount of male and female villains. And while villains do get redeemed, the show avoids the HighHeelFaceTurn. Out of all villains, half of the males have been redeemed and at least two females (Tamara and Cruella) are irredeemably evil. The show also averts the tendency for male villains to not get an explanation for their villainy as many of them are Anti-Villains.
377* Music/SClub7 in their TV series had the band consisting of four girls and three guys (down to two guys during the last season), with equal amounts of men and women making up supporting roles. The girls had plenty of plots that didn't involve their relationships with men, and there was no moral high ground for either gender.
378* ''Series/CriminalMinds'' had a mostly gender-equal cast and all of them had proven to be competent with their job. Some of the cases that they handle are sex-related and several of the victims are women. The show deconstructs these sort of cases where the FBI take them very seriously. However, in the middle of the show, J.J. and Emily were out of the show due to ExecutiveMeddling leaving Garcia as the only female member of the team, much of the fans' frustrations. Fortunately, J.J. came back but Emily did not [[spoiler:since she faked her death after confronted her ArchEnemy]] and there were several female FBI agents who took her place with varying degrees of success.
379* ''Series/OrangeIsTheNewBlack'', despite being set in an all-female prison actually falls closer to here rather than any of the higher levels. It naturally has a lot more female characters but there are still plenty of male characters in the prison staff and families of the inmates. Said male characters are just as competent, flawed, and/or villainous as the female characters. It even averts the suggestion of men naturally having a position of power by having plenty of female characters among the staff too.
380
381[[AC:TabletopGames]]
382* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', in statistical terms anyway. It can differ according to the setting, with allowances for the fact that it's mostly medieval-level societies. ''TabletopGame/{{Planescape}}'', ''TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'', and ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' are probably the most egalitarian, with plenty of powerful, competent women who hold the same roles men do.
383** D&D has an interesting relationship with this trope. As explained in the v3.5 ''Dungeon Master's Guide II'', the makers of the game have gone out of their way to ensure gender equality, both mechanically and within the (generally assumed) game universe--even when this clashes with players' initial expectations of a medieval-ish society. There is a simple and compelling reason for this: they don't want barriers for female player characters. However, since D&D is possibly the biggest TropeCodifier of the fantasy genre, a lot of other fantasy works that didn't have the same practical need for egalitarianism picked it up anyway. The result is that today, completely gender-blind fantasy worlds are the norm unless this trope is actually discussed in the work. This applies even if the world is otherwise based on a medieval or otherwise non-gender-equal real-world culture.
384** In 1st Edition AD&D, females' Strength scores had a lower ceiling than males', which effectively barred them from being fighters by making them undesirable, and ''literally'' barred Small female demihumans from classes with a high minimum Strength score.
385*** [[MemeticMutation -4 Strength!]]
386* Played straight in ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}'', where hormone-suppressing drugs and Computer-directed education means that most clones see no distinction between the genders other than a different set of superficial attributes. Characters in Secret Societies that study the mangled relics of the past ''might'' get some glimpses of gender inequality, but it's [[FutureImperfect always filtered by misguided understanding of those relics]] and [[RuleOfFunny played for laughs]].
387* Applies to the ''TabletopGame/{{Deadlands}}'' campaign setting, since the dangers of the west means most communities need everyone they can get and can't be picky. There's also an [[AlternateHistory unusually long]] [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar American Civil War]] that drained a lot of male resources. If a woman wants to guard your caravan and at least knows which end of her gun is which, you hire her. The same thing has done a good job of erasing racism.
388* In ''TabletopGame/LegendsOfTheWulin'', While mainstream society is just as sexist as it was in historical China, the Wulin is presented as an idealized society, where members are judged by their deeds, rather than their sex, ethnicity, or wealth. The game recommends that for female [=PCs=], gender prejudice should only be as much of a problem as the player wants it to be.
389* Applies greatly in ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'', in the military there many female mechwarriors and soldiers. Even more so in Clan society, no one gives a second thought to anyone's gender, as Clanners achieve their rank and position as they earned it, and are badass enough to get there.
390
391[[AC:VideoGames]]
392* ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedSyndicate'', despite taking place in Victorian-era London, one of the most fiercely sexist eras in history, manages to outdo all of its predecessors in the series when it comes to depicting equality between men and women. The game has a male ''and'' female protagonist in the form of twin Assassins Jacob and Evie Frye who run a street gang called the Rooks, which is going up against the Templar-controlled Blighters to reclaim London for the Assassin Brotherhood. Notably, both the Rooks and Blighters, as well as the more elite Templars, are composed of male and female {{Mooks}}, averting the MenAreTheExpendableGender trope by presenting the WouldHitAGirl trope in a feminist context.
393** There is a controversial split over Evie's handling, namely in that she's playable for roughly 25% of the story missions [[GameFavoredGender compared to Jacob's 75%]]. This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that Evie is available for literally everything else in the game. Free roam, income activities, and the vast majority of side quests can be completed by both Jacob and Evie. There is also the fact that [[spoiler:Jacob's actions are presented as being hasty and shortsighted, and ultimately have negative effects on London that Evie must help fix, and that it is ultimately her quest for the Shroud that finishes off the game and becomes the more important storyline]].
394** There also turns out to be [[spoiler:a second female protagonist for a brief portion of the game that jumps to World War I named Lydie Frye, Jacob's grand-daughter and the active Assassin in London in 1916, thereby making it out to be that the PlayerCharacter trio in the game is composed of TwoGirlsAndAGuy]].
395* In ''Franchise/{{Disgaea}}'' men and women of various classes have the same base stats and aptitudes in the key stats but vary in weapon proficiency, other stats, and evil acts. The cast is usually relatively equal in terms of gender ratio and there are just as many badass women as there are badass men.
396** The PowerTrio in the first game is also made up of TwoGirlsAndAGuy.
397* ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' fits right in here. The main protagonist is male more often than not, but there are quite a few women who share that role with a male lead. (Although there has yet to be a female lord who is unquestionably ''the'' protagonist without sharing that role with someone else, but it's not a huge loss.) Story-wise, there are as many females in positions of power as males, and functionally, the genders are equal in combat. For every uber-powered male character you run into, there's an uber-powered female somewhere (e.g., Ike and Hector are regarded as powerhouses, but so are Ayra and Titania).
398* ''Franchise/DragonAge'' zig-zags this depending on the specifics InUniverse, it seems that most of Thedas is pretty gender-neutral, but OutOfUniverse, some stereotypes still apply.
399** Overall, it is a StandardFantasySetting where women can become warriors (from common soldiers to knights to religious templars), scholars, heads of noble houses and lands, and heads of state with no in-universe detraction. That said, WomenAreWiser is an assumption for the Chantry, which is a gender-reversal of the restrictions of the Catholic Church, due to the game's CrystalDragonJesus herself being female. In Tevinter, their version of the Chantry has an all-male priesthood but is otherwise apparently as egalitarian as the rest of Thedas.
400** That being said, almost every female character in a position of power got there either as a result of SleepingTheirWayToTheTop or some sort of WoundedGazelleGambit. For instance, the game's CrystalDragonJesus was the wife of a king who later became the chosen bride of TheMaker, the story's YHWH {{Expy}}. Likewise, Queen Anora of Ferelden married the legitimate heir, King Maric, to become queen consort. Empress Celene of Orlais (by de facto, the most politically-powerful woman outside of the Chantry) had to make friends and political allies to outmaneuver her cousin (a man) in the legitimate line of succession. It's also implied that she has, or will, perform sexual favors or employ seduction as necessary to secure her power. While each of these women quickly proved that they were ruthless and/or competent enough that the position was well deserved, for the most part, they still got there in a way that's stereotypically feminine.
401** Dwarves have a tradition of female warriors who fight for the [[AmazonBrigade Silent Sisters]], and women are forced to become warriors, smiths, or merchants just like the men depending on what [[FantasticCasteSystem caste]] they were born into. That said, SleepingTheirWayToTheTop still applies, as we're specifically told about a subsect of Common Dwarves called "Noble Hunters", whose main goal is to [[TheBabyTrap have a child with a noble]] so that they and their child can be ascended into a better life. Noble hunters can be male, but the ''vast'' majority are female, and the player themselves can only have a sexual encounter with them if male.
402** Elves in human lands are universally [[FantasticRacism treated like shit]] by the humans and disenfranchised as a whole, although it would appear elven women in particular face the threat of being raped by human men who have been given license to abuse them. Dalish elves are egalitarian, with female hunters and warriors being just as common as their male counterparts. The individual leader of every Dalish clan, called the Keeper, can also be male or female. However, we're only given one glimpse at how a Dalish courtship works, and that instance involves a male hunter needing to [[ARealManIsAKiller go out and kill something to bring back as an engagement gift]]. Whether this would also apply if genders were reversed is unknown.
403** The aforementioned Qunari have rather strict gender roles but enforce them just as harshly on their men as well as their women. The Qunari do not view women or men as being weaker compared to the other, merely different and destined to fulfill different duties in their fiercely collectivist society. Ironically, this makes the Qunari a de facto matriarchal society since the higher administrative and political positions are occupied entirely by women, according to their custom. Individuals who transgress these gender roles aren't punished or pitied, but rather declared transgender and allowed to assume the role, and gender identity, of whatever it is they're best at.
404* In the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' world it's pretty common to see women as soldiers, carrying weapons (and knowing well how to use them), in charge of units and fighting like their male counterparts, you can even see female raiders and bandits, and female ''ghouls''. Looks like that, when you live in a CrapsackWorld full of mutant animals, merciless criminal gangs, radiation, enormous and scary super mutants, and extremely deadly creatures like the deathclaws, sexism is a stupid and pointless thing and every human able to use a weapon must do the work.
405** Though there are only a few female Enclave soldiers (besides, they look the same as men due to the PoweredArmor, making it hard to tell them apart). Most of them are given seemingly safer jobs as scientists and leaving the dangerous wasteland duties to the men. Most likely because of their wish to preserve the human species.
406** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' does have as one of its main factions Caesar's Legion, who are quite enthusiastic about wanting to push back the setting to Roman levels of sexual discrimination... But then, they're kinda bad guys, so it's not really surprising.
407* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'':
408** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'' falls here with not only the main playable cast being 3 out of 5 females, all 3 are figures of authority and just as capable as the male cast.
409** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' has a debate going over which female party member is the main character, said two female characters are the only ones who learn magic naturally, one of them used to be a general, and the plot focuses just as much on the female characters as the male ones in total... due to there being that many more male characters.
410** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' uses the same trick as ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'', not in both genders being stupid, but with giving the females the cool magic powers. Other than that, the various roles are split very well among the cast, with both genders shown to be equally emotionally weak. This is also the first game in the series where the main playable party is split 50/50 between the genders (disregarding temporary party members), a tradition that's been (mostly) carried on since.
411** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' hands superpowers of mass destruction and {{Heroic BSOD}}s to both genders equally (if you take Kuja into the consideration, if not then the girls win on the superpowerful magic side of things). There are several competent females in positions of power (including badass army general Beatrix), and an [[AmazonBrigade amazon army]] for Alexandria. The main party of heroes has Garnet, Freya, and Eiko; three strong, fleshed-out, and highly competent ladies.
412** While the universe of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' may be less equalized, the story itself is definitively gender-balanced. With the focus of the story being on Yuna's journey instead of Tidus's achievements, and the only insignificant party member being a male one (Kimahri). And the stretch through the ruins of Zanarkand shows that the setting's past has been strewn with strong female figures just as much as males.
413** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' gender-balances well with princess Ashe being more recognized as the main character than viewpoint character Vaan (though Basch was originally designed as the main character, until [[ExecutiveMeddling it was decided that the game's demographic wouldn't go for a middle-aged male lead]]). The focal point of the story is not centered so much on the characters as it is on the political climate of Ivalice as a result of the Archadian Empire's control over Ashe's rightful territory of Dalmasca (and, in the background, their struggle with the neighbouring Rozzarian Empire). The only real gender issue that is ever brought up within the game is the segregation between male and female [[BeastMan Viera]] (of which only the females are even seen in-game); outside of this, gender roles appear to be more or less balanced. With that said, Judge Drace, [[TheSmurfettePrinciple the sole woman]] within the ranks of the Archadian Judge Magisters, was the only one to directly call out Vayne for killing his father, Emperor Gramis, and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLBGbUGryRE was executed for it.]] The fact that she was the only major female character outside of the protagonist's team in the game doesn't really help.
414** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' continues on the by now-tradition of having just as many well-fleshed out female characters as male characters. It's the second in the series with a female main character and gives the females both of the more iconic recurring summons (Bahamut and Odin). The males, as a balance, get the cooler Synthesist roles.
415** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' has an interesting case. Aside from the obvious situation of lacking statistical differences between the genders, all three nations are led by women, and the main contact for the second half of the story in A Realm Reborn is female as well (making roughly half of the active members of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn female, if you count Tataru; if the PlayerCharacter is female that balance is tilted). In addition, A Realm Reborn adds playable male [[BeastMan Miq'ote]] and female Rogaedyn, maintaining the balance of playable genders. (Although ''Shadowbringers'' would later tilt this again with the lithe, buxom, and bunny-like Viera and the hulking, stout, and felinid Wrothgar being exclusively female and male, respectively.) However, while Kan-E-Senna of Gridania and Admiral Bloefyswyn of Limsa Lominsan are strong ActionGirl leaders of their nations, Sultana Nanamo of Ul'dah is a tiny Lalafell and unsuited to fighting, so the Ul'dah contact is her hulking general, Raubahn (he is often seen ''carrying'' her). Additionally, [[spoiler:after defeating Titan, Minfilia, and half of the Scions (including plenty of the men, mind) are kidnapped. Fortunately, the two "active" women, Yda and Y'shtola, escape and help you coordinate the rescue, but it still is a little rocky]]. The game also makes sure you remember that women are at risk of sexual harrassment and violence in a way male characters aren't, and "girl or woman forced into sex work by poverty" is a very common backstory. It is also made very clear that the Garlean Empire uses rape as one of its tools to subjugate conquered territories. On the plus side? NPC dialogue will actually change to reflect your character's gender when speaking about you.
416* ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER}}'' (also known as ''VideoGame/{{EarthBound|1994}}'') is a series that focuses on a male protagonist throughout all three games but does tend to feature females as being fairly integral to the story throughout the series. Gameplay-wise, the female playables all suffer from being cast as relatively frail physically, though ''VideoGame/EarthboundBeginnings'' has a Pippi-Longstocking shout-out who joins early and is the strongest character in the game growthwise (same stat growth as Teddy, the game's physical powerhouse), and though Ana is technically optional, she gets a myriad of insanely strong offensive, defensive, and support PSI, and is arguably the most potent PSI user in the entire series; she can do nearly anything with her PSI. ''VideoGame/{{EarthBound|1994}}'' is perhaps the worst offender of the series, with Paula being kidnapped repeatedly, despite her being the first playable character with some extremely potent offensive PSI at her disposal, and the one who is integral in bringing together all the other characters as well as the one character needed during the final battle thanks to her special ability. ''VideoGame/Mother3'' is by far the best in terms of gender equality portrayal, including dealing with androgyny and transgenderism in a positive light.
417* ''VideoGame/{{SaGa|RPG}}'' features relatively equal amounts of male and female characters throughout the games. The early ones had marginally different starting stats and equipment depending on if you chose male or female characters (with females actually being advantageous in several cases such as getting a Saber in the first game if you started female), but gender had no effect whatsoever on your stat growth or what skills/equipment you could use.
418* ''VideoGame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic'' has both men and women serving in combat roles in both the [[TheFederation Galactic Republic]] and the [[TheEmpire Sith Empire]]. The Jedi Grandmaster Satale Shan is female and so was her predecessor. By end game, the Republic's Supreme Chancellor is a female Twi'lek. The Sith Empire drafts any non-Force user of age into the Imperial Military for both combat and non-combat roles. Also the Sith more concerned with FantasticRacism to non-humans and non-sith purebloods than gender inequality.
419* ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsOriginalGeneration'' has a more or less balanced ratio of Female/Male Pilots, most of whom are paired together as couples. [[GuysSmashGirlsShoot One anomaly]], gameplay-wise, is that the majority of female pilots are usually endowed with stats that favor towards high accuracy and evasion, and assigned machines with long-range attacks [[note]] e.g.: Seolla Schweitzer and WildFalken, Excellen Browning and Weissritter/Rein Weissritter, Lamia Loveless and Angelg/Vysaga, Kusuha Mizuha and RyuKoOh/Shin RyuKoOh, Fiona Gureden and Excellence Eternal, Leona Garstein and Gaurlion Custom/Seigerlion, Ring Mao and Huckebein. [[/note]], While Male Pilots are endowed with stats concentrating on high Defense and Melee, with machines that specialize in close and midrange combat [[note]] e.g.: Arado Balanga and Wildwurger, Kyosuke Nambu and Alteisen/Altesien Riese, Axel Almer and Soulgain, Bullet Luckfield and KoRyuOh/Shin KoRyuOh, Raul Gureden and Excellence Lightning, Tasuku Shinguji and Giganscudo/Giganscudo Duro, Irmgult Kazahara and Grungust/Grungust Kai [[/note]], though this also gets balanced out with other pilots that don’t neatly fit this dichotomy [[note]] e.g.: Katina Tarask, Russel Bergman, Alfimi, Gilliam Yeager, Raidiese F. Branstein, Ratsel Feinschmecker, Ricarla Borgnine, Yuuki Jaggar, Radha Byraban, Ryune Zoldark, Folka Albark, Fernando Albark, Alion lucada.[[/note]], and the choice to modify a pilot's combat stats and assign them to other mecha.
420* The ''Franchise/{{Persona}}'' series has a mostly balanced gender ratio. Male party members tend to outnumber females, but in ''VideoGame/Persona4'' and ''VideoGame/Persona5'' this is somewhat mitigated by the addition of a female [[MissionControl Navigator]], who turns the party into a GenderEqualEnsemble. Both men and women get the same amount of development and have their own CharacterArc. Girls arguably even had ''more'' development in the original release of ''VideoGame/Persona3'', since they had [[LevelUpAtIntimacy5 Social Links]] that men lacked until the release of ''Portable''. While the protagonists for each game are mostly male, there have been a few female protagonists: ''VideoGame/Persona2: Eternal Punishment'' had Maya in the lead role rather than Tatsuya, and ''Persona 3 FES'' and ''Persona 3 Portable'' further rectify it by adding a PostScriptSeason starring [[RobotGirl Aigis]] and a new, albeit non-canon female route, which was even acknowledged as its own universe in ''VideoGame/PersonaQ2NewCinemaLabyrinth''.
421** Ironically, the mostly-male protagonist lineup means that their Velvet Room Attendants, whose genders are always opposite to their guest, are all female.[[note]]Barring Theodore, who hails from ''Portable'''s female route anyway, and ''1'' and ''2'', which lacked Attendants.[[/note]] Just for the record, Attendants are alternatively known as ''[[PhysicalGod Rulers of Power]]'', and are among most powerful characters in the franchise.
422* ''VideoGame/{{Rift}}'''s resident badasses are about evenly divided between genders.
423* Although ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'' is usually very good at gender equality in playable characters, the only games with a female protagonist are the games where you can choose between male or female. Even then, promotional art usually features the male character more often. There is also not many female villains in the series, either.
424** Starting from ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIII'', female characters are much more prominent. All of the playable characters can be male or female.
425** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestXI'' is definitely here. Although the main character is still a man, three out of the seven [[spoiler: until Act 2, when another guy joins]] party members are strong and powerful women; especially Jade, who's basically [[ActionGirl girl power incarnate]]. Among the supporting characters, there's a good balance between men and women, and the player sees plenty of female fighters at the coliseum. Add to that a handful of female villains, and this game does pretty well. There's even some positive LGBT representation in Sylvando; while the game never ''states'' that he's gay, it's quite clear that he's intended to be written as such.
426* Most [[RomanceGame otome games]] have plot driven mainly by men with minimally written female characters, [[CastFullOfPrettyBoys since that's what most people play them for]]. ''VisualNovel/CodeRealize'' stands out for having a protagonist with agency in the story and having characterization and backstory just as rich as the male love interests. [[ActionGirl She can hold her own in a battle, too.]] There are many other women that play major roles in the story, all of them well-written and badass to some degree.
427* The ''VideoGame/TalesSeries'' keeps close to a 50/50 ratio of male and female party members, and it's the norm to have at least one ActionGirl amongst them. There's also a good number of female villains. Perhaps the only imbalance was the lack of female protagonists, which has now been remedied with ''VideoGame/TalesOfBerseria''.
428** ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'' does this intentionally. In the beginning, [[TheDitz Lloyd's personality]] is balanced with [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Collette's]]. We have Raine and Kratos, both portrayed as sensible and intelligent, and when Sheena joins up, she and Genis are considerably more idealistic than Raine and Kratos, but also considerably more pragmatic than Lloyd and Collette. When [[spoiler:Kratos leaves]], his place is eventually taken by the equally respectable Regal. Overall, people of both genders are represented with a wide range of personalities, viewpoints, and intelligence/skill levels. In addition, the game's world seems quite egalitarian, with a healthy supporting cast of important male and female [=NPC=]s, a powerful and prominent female villain (Pronyma), and several women among the enemy organizations' ranks.
429** ''VideoGame/TalesOfXillia'': Either the male or female lead can fill the role of "protagonist," while both are extremely capable, as are their companions.
430** ''VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss'' sits particularly firmly here with extremely badass heroes and villains both male (Luke, Jade, Guy, Van, Asch, Largo, Sync) and female (Tear, Natalia, Anise, Legretta, Arietta) alike, and said males and females sharing equal prominence in the story. In fact, the leading lady Tear's introduction consists of her infiltrating a mansion and performing an assassination attempt on someone [[spoiler: who later is revealed to be the main villain]]. Mind you, she's the WhiteMagicianGirl and also a soldier.
431** ''VideoGame/TalesOfBerseria'' is the first Tales games in which the protagonist is female, and sure enough, she's a massive badass who carries the story exceptionally well, with a great deal of CharacterDevelopment to boot.
432** ''VideoGame/TalesOfVesperia'' is another good example. The main party consists of four guys, four girls, and a [[TeamPet dog]]. All four girls are {{Action Girl}}s, and the whole party has a wide range of different personality types, which are all treated as equally valid and respectable. They're also all extremely competent in their own way, with Yuri and Judith being the biggest badasses. There's also shown to be several women among the knights, guilds, and political positions. Perhaps the only notable imbalance is the lack of major female villains, but even that's softened a little by fighting plenty of female {{Mooks}} as well as male ones.
433* The first few ''VideoGame/BackyardSports'' games are an extreme example of this trope. The playable characters are equally divided between boys and girls, and the commentators are a boy and a girl as well. What makes this extreme is that ''all the [=NPCs=]'' are equally divided between boys and girls.
434* Post-Adventure ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' games rank here, as the women and men are pretty much equal, with minimal stereotyping sans designs. Unleashed onwards, however, slide the scale toward Men Are More Equal, as while Amy stuck around, Cream is DemotedToExtra and Blaze and Rouge are PutOnABus.
435* Most every ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' game is split ''very'' cleanly down the middle. There's almost always a male and female protagonist each game partnering up and aside from a few slight gameplay differences (like Jill having a larger inventory in the original game), neither is really presented as better or worse than the others.
436* It doesn't get much more egalitarian than ''VideoGame/ValkyriaChronicles''. Not only are the hero and heroine both well-rounded and competent characters (as well as being [[SingleWomanSeeksGoodMan relationship goals]]), but there is a 50/50 split between men and women in the military whom you can recruit into your squad. In fact, a lot of the best soldiers in your roster are women, along with plenty of great male soldiers. The main BigBad is a man, while his [[TheDragon most important - and most ''dangerous'' - subordinate]] is an absurdly powerful woman. Said female villain also gets her own DLC, in which you can play as her for 4 separate missions and learn more about her character. And yes, she gets to be insanely awesome in it. So yeah, this game has absolutely no shortage of strong women or men whatsoever.
437* ''VideoGame/BlazBlue'' has an unusually even male-to-female ratio for a FightingGame series, and both genders are roughly equally represented in terms of both screen time and power scale.
438* ''VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown'' has the exact same skill trees for both male and female soldiers, with both genders fighting on the front lines on equal footing, both having the same chances of developing psychic potential, and both [[spoiler:eligible to become the Volunteer]]. Meanwhile at the base, (female) Dr. Vahlen and (male) Dr. Shen are your chief researcher and chief engineer, establishing gender equality in non-combat aspects of XCOM, as well.
439* As of ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', Azeroth sports almost full equality. You will find an equal of male and female characters in almost every army. Three and 1/3 of the player faction leaders are female, and amongst the military commanders and minor faction leaders, while females are not as common as men, they are just as competent, noble, bloodthirsty, and evil, and there is extremely little dialogue that indicates the [=NPCs=] don't view them as equals.
440* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfDragoon'' fits here tentatively. While the official "female lead" Shana is definitely the resident DamselInDistress, we also have Rose and Meru, two highly competent {{Action Girl}}s with every bit as much plot importance as the male characters (Rose is almost as much the leading lady as Shana). Later on, we meet Miranda, who's the general of an army. There's also a rather powerful female villain, Lenus. However, most of the equipment is notably gender-specific, Rose's ActionGirl status is sometimes treated as somewhat out of the ordinary, Lenus is the only prominent female villain, and a good many of the important [=NPCs=] are male. However, there are still a decent share of important female [=NPCs=] and three of the seven legendary heroes are female, [[spoiler:and one of them is none other than Rose, one of the leading ladies]]. Overall, while there are a couple of factors holding it back a little, it is certainly not enough to situate the game in Level 4, placing it quite comfortably here.
441* In ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends'', the only requirement to be a playable character is to be [[WorldOfBadass Badass]], so any female champion is automatically an ActionGirl. While the number of male characters ''is'' greater than the number of female characters, female champions are fairly represented in all positions and roles, and appear throughout the tier lists, just as male characters do. In the lore, there are just as many women in positions of power as there are men, especially in Ionia, the Freljord, and Piltover.
442* ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' and its [[VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords sequel]] featured more female Jedi and Sith than the ''Star Wars'' movies themselves. One of them (Bastila Shan) ended as a DamselInDistress but she kicked ass when she got out and is well known by the Jedi for her Battle Meditation which boosts the morale of her side through the Force. The other woman in the sequel (Kreia) is very cryptic in giving lessons to the PlayerCharacter [[spoiler:and it turns out that she's a Sith who wants to destroy the Force]].
443* ''Franchise/{{Danganronpa}}'' has a GenderEqualEnsemble in every main game and, counting the novels and spin-off games, the amount of main characters male and female is roughly equal. The only installment to falter on this practice is ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaV3KillingHarmony'', [[spoiler:which had its seeming female lead be the first main character to die.]]
444* ''VideoGame/{{Overwatch}}'' from a gameplay perspective has almost as many female badasses as males. In the story, which is told in the ExpandedUniverse, they're just as central to the plot as their male counterparts, whether they be on the side of good (Tracer, Mercy), evil (Widowmaker, Sombra), are morally ambiguous (Symmetra), or are a core part of the backstory (Ana). There's no implication that gender holds someone back at all in this universe, with the good guys accepting of both genders and even the villains being EqualOpportunityEvil.
445* The ''VideoGame/TrailsSeries'' that only recently started to become known in the west, while being very popular in Japan for the complex story, is full of this. For starters, you have a [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsInTheSky female protagonist right in the first arc]] and the whole female cast is as competent as the male cast. This does '''not''' change in the following arcs, where every female character has the same amount of development as the men, are equally as skilled, and win fights that are plot-relevant. It got to the point that we have women in the ranks of the strongest characters in the series [[spoiler:main antagonist of the franchise included!]]
446* ''Franchise/{{Splatoon}}'': Inklings and Octolings of both genders can participate in Turf Wars and ranked battles. While usually depicted as female, Agents 3, 4, 8, and New 3 can be male or female and kick just as much ass regardless. Callie, Marie, Pearl, Marina, Fyre, and Shiver are {{Idol Singer}}s by day, but double as {{Action Girl}}s when the going gets tough. The two most prominent male characters, Cap'n Cuttlefish and DJ Octavio, are highly competent strategists and military commanders (as dotty as the former seems initially). All in all, the series favors women slightly more than men but does a very good job of portraying the two as equals.
447* In ''VideoGame/WorldNeverland,'' male and female characters have the same stats, and both genders can take any job. In addition, when a couple gets married, they can choose [[TheMaidenNameDebate whose last name to use,]] unless one member of the couple has a hereditary title--in which case, his or her last name takes automatic precedence. (I.E., if a man marries the Queen, he'll always take her last name.) The only real difference is that pregnant women can't do certain things on the day they're due to give birth (such as go into dungeons), but they're {{Pregnant Badass}}es otherwise.
448
449[[AC:WebAnimation]]
450* ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'' generally belongs here, with interspersed glimpses of the next level here and there. There are a lot of capable male and female warriors (whether Huntsmen or otherwise) on each side, although the main four are all girls, and the pilot saw [[TheHeroine Ruby Rose]] easily dispatching an all-male mook squad then putting Roman Torchwick on defensive until he was rescued by [[DarkActionGirl Cinder]]. In the preceding Yellow Trailer, [[BoisterousBruiser Yang Xiao Long]], the older half-sister of Ruby, also punched Junior's gangsters all around his nightclub, with only [[AsskickingLeadsToLeadership Junior himself]] and the Malachite twin sisters -- his BodyguardBabes duo -- posing a somewhat real challenge to her. Subsequent episodes and volumes, however, took a more gender-balanced approach, with the secondary team of four being (at least in the beginning) a GenderEqualEnsemble, and a number of supporting characters of both sexes were introduced and proven to be as efficient in combat. In summary, Remnant societies may have tensions along a number of lines such as [[FantasticRacism racial]] or [[SlobsVersusSnobs class]], but all of them, for the most part, have moved past gender prejudices. Understandable since they have to fend off [[AnimalisticAbomination the Grimm]] with every fighter available lest humans get overwhelmed by them, and any human -- or [[LittleBitBeastly Faunus]], -- regardless of their sex[=/=]gender, may have a [[PersonalityPowers Semblance]] that turns out to be handy in this struggle.
451
452[[AC:Webcomics]]
453* ''Webcomic/{{Erfworld}}'': Since PurelyAestheticGender is well into effect (gender doesn't even have any bearing on ''reproduction''), the genders are completely equal in this world. The idea of discriminating based on gender is an alien concept to them.
454* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'': the cast is evenly divided between male and female characters, everyone can kick roughly equal amounts of ass (fashion-designing girly girl Kanaya fights zombies with a chainsaw; Roxy loves kittens and stuffed animals but is both a competent hacker and scientist and doesn't even need a weapon to fuck shit up), and Alternian society, while terrible in most ways, made basically no distinctions based on gender and both members of their imperial line were female, and WordOfGod confirms that gender means nothing to them.
455* Haley and Miko of ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'' are just as badass as their male teammates and receive just as much character development.
456* ''Webcomic/TheWordWeary'' has a lot more male characters than female, but all of the female characters are treated with the same respect and agency as the males.
457
458[[AC:WebOriginal]]
459* ''[[Roleplay/DarwinsSoldiers Darwin's Soldiers]]'' has several [[ActionGirl female combatants]] and [[DistressedDude men in distress]]. In general, a combatant has an even chance of being male or female.
460* ''WebOriginal/GrowingAround'': While over half of the cast is female, nearly every boy and girl are generally shown to be on equal footing. The protagonist Sally is a girl, but there would be almost no difference in her personality if she were a boy. After all, she is a girl who doesn't mind getting soaked in mud. Meanwhile, her brother Max had a secret fondness for a comic book series aimed at girls. These would later be explained further in [[https://www.deviantart.com/mrenter/art/GA-Commentary-Gender-Episodes-812499760 a commentary for a handful of episodes on gender dynamics]].
461* In ''WebVideo/TheGuild'' there are three women players and three men players in the main cast, as they wanted to point out the high number of girl gamers in online games. The girls are shown to be just as powerful and skilled as any of the guys they face in the game. Even if they're all equally idiotic.
462* Website/ChannelAwesome. While still a bit of a sausagefest, everyone loves [[{{Slapstick}} fighting]], everyone has varying levels of intelligence, and everyone's a lunatic.
463* ''Website/SCPFoundation'': Some of the sanest researchers are female, the named cast of researchers is increasingly gender-equal, and the plethora of evil {{Eldritch Abomination}}s they have contained are about even in gender as well. The RedShirtArmy is the exception, as it is composed of convicted felons considered [[WeHaveReserves expendable]] and, in RealLife, male convicted criminals do outnumber women in many countries. Field Agents, while often unnamed, are usually both mixed in gender and in race. Their WellIntentionedExtremist counterpart, the Global Occult Coalition, have only gotten fleshed out in-story but so far have stayed at this level. In a universe with BlackAndGrayMorality and this much Nightmare Fuel under every rock, gender is a sidenote.
464
465
466[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
467* In ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', there are a lot of well-characterized female characters that are independent of a relationship with a male (Princess Bubblegum, Marceline, Lumpy Space Princess). Both genders are also very capable of kicking ass and defending themselves as well.
468** The same principle also applies to its genderbent world of Aaa: Fionna, Cake, and Ice Queen are pretty much introduced as independent female characters who are as competent as their male counterparts, just as how Marshall and Gumball are as competent as their female counterparts.
469* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}'', male and female characters are generally portrayed at about the same level of (in)competence. Everyone is screwed up emotionally or mentally, with no overt correlation between level of competence or emotional state and gender.
470* In ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', the genders are represented fairly equally.
471** To break down the main group, in the first season and part of the second, there was Aang (male/bender), Katara (female/bender), and Sokka (male/normal). In the second season they pick up Toph (female bender) and the group stays as that until the third season. Then, halfway through that season, finally finishing his HeelFaceTurn, Zuko (male/bender) joins and several episodes later helps bring in Suki (female/normal). That brings it to an even representation in overall numbers and combat abilities for both sexes.
472*** Azula and her all-girl team of antagonists are far more successful in general than the previous male antagonists (succeeding in their conquest of the Earth Kingdom where Zhao failed at the North Pole, and striking down the Avatar himself after Zuko failed so many times).
473** It's also a bit odd to note that the villainous Fire Nation seemed to have a more gender-equal military (or at least police) than the good guy Earth Kingdom (we only ever saw male Earth Kingdom soldiers or police/city-guards, while the Fire Nation even had mixed-gender prisons and prison guards). The Water Tribes turned out to be even more sexist; Sokka was something of a HeManWomanHater, [[CharacterDevelopment at first]], and the waterbenders at the North Pole turned out to be a bunch of jerks--much to Katara's chagrin. This resulted in a JackieRobinsonStory, which ultimately worked out for Katara. There’s also the fact that come the time of ''Korra '', Zuko’s daughter is the Firelord and it’s not treated like a big deal and she’s a calm, capable head of state.
474** Of the six Avatars we know of (Korra, Aang, Roku, Kyoshi, Kuruk, and Yangchen), there's a perfectly even three to three gender balance. The shot of all the Avatars in ''Korra '' is roughly split equally between men and women.
475*** ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'' brings us a close-up on one of those female Avatars, series lead Korra. Her main crew are two male benders, and her Airbender master is male as well. However, joining the female members are Pema, Ikki, Jinora, and especially Chief Bei Fong—a kickass earth bender who doesn't take crap from anybody, and Asami Sato, a rich girl who is perfectly capable of kicking asses without a bending ability. The bad guys, on the other hand, skew pretty heavily male, with the only female Equalists being background extras with no lines.
476*** The second season ups the ante a bit for both sides. The hero's side remains fairly egalitarian with the addition of Kya and Bumi, Tenzin's brother and sister, both of whom are very competent in their respective fields and get the opportunity to show it. Lin Beifong takes a back seat to keep the focus on Korra and her gang, but Jinora steps up into her place to take a significant role in the plot of the finale. The antagonists' side is still fairly male-centric, with Unalaq and Varrick being the equally villainous bosses on both sides of a civil war. However, their female sidekicks both take ''much'' more active roles in the story. Zhu Li, Varrick's GirlFriday, seems to be even more competent than Varrick at times; Eska, Unalaq's [[DaddysLittleVillain daughter]] and [[TheDragon dragon]], is the dominant personality of her and her brother Desna's [[CreepyTwins relationship]] and not at all afraid of going against her father's orders [[DragonWithAnAgenda when she deems it necessary]].
477*** The third and fourth seasons make things about as equal as possibly imaginable between the genders. The third season features another male main villain (Zaheer), however two out of his three subordinates (all of whom are extremely badass) are female. It also introduces Suyin Bei Fong, the (very powerful) matriarch of a city of metalbenders. The fourth season finally introduces a female main villain (Kuvira) as well as the current Firelord (Izumi), not to mention reintroducing Toph. However, Kuriva's main (and very competent) subordinates tend to be male. All in all the series is a textbook of a show with many strong and competent characters of both genders.
478* ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'' has multiple competent and diverse female characters. Police detective Elisa Maza saves [[TheHero Goliath's]] life just as often as he saves hers, women being in positions of power (police chief, clan leader) is treated as a non-issue, and the female villains are just as interesting, well-motivated, and (on occasion) psychotic as their male counterparts. Occasionally suffers from having only one [[TheSmurfettePrinciple token female character]] per clan, but that's the only real issue.
479[[/folder]]
480
481!Level 6: Women Are Better Than Men
482At this level, women are always TheProtagonist and usually don't need men to fight for them. Men, while still competent (usually), are only supporters at best, accessories at worst, and can only hope to be part of the TokenRomance. While cases of NeverASelfMadeWoman can still happen, most times bloodlines, royal heritage and the like are matrilineal, and male power figures, if they exist, will always stay in the background or make just one demonstration of authority for good measure. While it's usually never stated that women are superior to men (that's more level 8), women are often shown as the only ones who can possibly make an impression in the storyline.
483
484[[folder:Examples]]
485
486[[AC:{{Anime}} & {{Manga}}]]
487* Various FeministFantasy´s fall here.
488* In the anime of ''Manga/{{Claymore}}'', only women can become the eponymous badasses, and the few men in the series are either evil, ineffectual, or both. (There were male Claymores, but they were incapable of controlling themselves and ended up succumbing to their SuperpoweredEvilSide.)
489%%* ''Anime/KikisDeliveryService''.
490* ''Anime/RevolutionaryGirlUtena'' is difficult to classify in a scale like this. It's a feminist fantasy and this is the level for feminist fantasies. Yes, girls fight both for themselves and on behalf of others. Utena wins fights against both girls and boys, but the boys tend to be dismissively sexist toward her, so she proves them wrong and knocks them down a peg. But women are not in charge here. The social systems surrounding the heroines are set up to make them into either princesses or witches, the in-universe analogue to [[MadonnaWhoreComplex madonnas and whores]]. And for what it's worth, the boys aren't satisfied with the roles available to them, either.
491* ''Anime/GirlsUndPanzer'' fits here. The only reason that it isn't higher up is that men are clearly empowered to at least the same degree as they are in Real Life in-universe, but there are absolutely no men who are relevant to the plot, and the only ones portrayed at all are Akiyama's father, the Hana family's manservant, spectators, and the man from the Education Ministry.
492* Male characters in ''Anime/{{Noir}}'' are usually either characters who only show up in one episode, or one of the many easily-killable {{Mooks}}
493* In ''Manga/RozenMaiden'' the female dolls get in on all the action, and Jun, the sole main male character, [[NonActionGuy just takes care of them the entire time]].
494* This trope is common in MagicalGirl series, most notably seen in the first ''Anime/SailorMoon'' anime, with Mamoru helping by just encouraging Usagi to never give up (and actually being more of a liability to the Sailor Senshi by being [[DistressedDude repeatedly brainwashed or kidnapped]]), and three boys who help Sailor Senshi via [[SuperGenderBender turning into magical girls themselves]]. Later in the series, Mamoru becomes more of a BadassNormal, but still lacks the sheer power of the Sailor Senshi.
495** In the [[Manga/SailorMoon original manga]], the Sailor Starlights are [[SweetPollyOliver simply cross-dressing]] in an effort to find their princess faster. Mamoru also gets his own attack and crystal making him basically equal to the other Senshi (excluding Moon, who is on her own level) in the manga, though he's not recognized as a Senshi due to his gender.
496* ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'' borders on Type 9, with only three named male characters--Madoka's father, Madoka's younger brother, and Sayaka [[spoiler:and Hitomi]]'s love interest Kyosuke Kamijou--and only Kyosuke (who is bedridden and mostly serves as motivation) has any impact on the plot.
497* ''Manga/MakenKi'':
498** Despite having a male protagonist, Takeru plays [[SupportingProtagonist a supporting role]] to the manga's deuteragonist, [[ElegantGothicLolita Himegami]]. In addition, she and Tenbi Academy's student council are [[MoreDeadlyThanTheMale vastly more powerful]] than Takeru and the other male students, which is why they usually end up saving ''him''.
499** Taken a step further by [[AmazonBrigade the Venus Unit]], whose powers and combat prowess outstrips the student council's (except for Himegami). And during chapters 76 onwards, they defeat several of [[NebulousEvilOrganisation the Kamigari group's]] upper echelon, most of whom are males. And, fittingly, the main antagonist himself (a certified HeroKiller) isn't defeated by Takeru, but by [[spoiler: Himegami]] instead.
500* ''Anime/PrettyCure'' falls into this category, with most if not all of the main cast being exceptionally powerful females. There are a few male characters that serve as support, such as some of the faries and humanoid mentors like [[Anime/HappinessChargePrettyCure Blue]], but all other males are either {{Muggle|s}} friends and family, villains of the Heel and [[HeelFaceTurn eventual Face variety]], or otherwise non-combattant. And before ''Anime/HugttoPrettyCure'' introduced the concept of male Cures, the series mostly portrayed the idea as [[Anime/SmilePrettyCure a one-off gag]], [[Anime/HeartcatchPrettyCure a pipe dream]], or [[Anime/DokiDokiPrettyCure a temporary powerup they had to make themself.]]
501** Even in ''Hugtto'' there's some give to this: the first male Cure that season ([[spoiler:Henri/Cure Infini]]) only held off the episode's monster until the girls dealt the finishing blow, and [[spoiler:all the other men were only transformed in the SuperEmpoweringEvent that gave everyone else enough power for the girls' SpiritBomb anyway]].
502
503[[AC:{{Comics}}]]
504* Played lightly in ''ComicBook/{{Runaways}}''. More than half of the original team were female (including the dinosaur), and, unlike the males, actually had superpowers. Of the original two males, one was self-admittedly dumb and the other [[spoiler: was revealed to be TheMole]]. While both guys on the team are now generally competent and likable, it's the girls who do the heavy lifting and make the decisions. Even the Gender-Neutral character is physically female most of the time.
505
506[[AC:{{Film}}]]
507* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Brave}}'', all of the major characters are female, including the main character. Men are usually portrayed as pigheaded, stupid, or generally inept. However, the women are also under the thumb of society--it is not considered socially acceptable for a woman to be "unladylike", but this does not mean "submissive", "frail" or "dependent on a man". It means SilkHidingSteel.
508* ''Film/SuckerPunch'' has a FiveManBand of all girls, plus their mentor as a female psychologist. The only prominent males are the villain and another mentor who only appears in fantasy sequences. The girls are trying to fight back against their oppressors.
509* In ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed'', all of the major characters are female, including the main character, Mei. The only significant male characters are the bully who targets Mei and Mei's father who provides moral and emotional support for her. Every other male is mostly just a FlatCharacter. The magical bloodline in the film is female only.
510
511[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
512* In the world of ''Literature/FrostflowerAndThorn'', the ruling priestly class is basically patriarchal, but a counterbalance is provided by the fact that all warriors are women (though most women aren't warriors). The leads are female, and so are most of the sympathetic characters.
513%%* ''Tomoe Gozen'' by Jessica Amanda Salmonson.
514%%* The ''Literature/{{Earthsea}}'' novel ''Tehanu'' by Creator/UrsulaKLeGuin
515%%* ''Morgaine'' by Creator/CJCherryh
516* Creator/SheriSTepper's ''TheArbaiTrilogy'', starting with ''Grass''. Men are consistently shown to be either too incompetent and ineffectual, or self-important and arrogant, to figure out what is really going on in the eponymous world. Most of the females are little better; but the few that the novels actually focus on, particularly the protagonist, are far and away more competent and effective than the men.
517* Creator/LFrankBaum's ''Literature/LandOfOz'' tends to sit here. Females like Ozma, Glinda, and the Witch of the North hold the reins of effective government. The Witches of the East and West also held power, but not in a good way. Dorothy has the most common sense of her party, all males who don't so much as blink about taking marching orders from a 12-year-old girl. She is also seen as Oz's heroine and champion, as well as Ozma's companion and heir! Kings are seen, but they're usually figureheads (like Oscar "The Wizard" Diggs), buffoons, or secondary to their wives.
518* ''Literature/{{Manifestation}}'': Falls into the "Women Are Better Than Men" ranking based on the ratio of female to male characters. All three point-of-view characters are women: Gabby Palladino, Tock Zipporah, and Dr. Patricia Caldwell. There are plenty of male supporting characters, but they tend to stay strictly in supporting roles.
519
520[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
521* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' is perhaps the best-known Western example. Evil and crazy witches appeared several times, but women in the Buffyverse seemed to be ''better'' at magic--both in skill and ethical use. Dedicated male magicians seemed to be morally ambiguous at best. Compare Jonathan (or Andrew for that matter) to Willow and Tara. When facing Dark Willow in Season 6 Giles is explicitly empowered by a coven of ''witches''. Female villains are guaranteed a pardon if they show the slightest amount of regret and are treated much more understandingly than men: the shortcut to showing that a villain is a monster is having him say "bitch", Buffy and Willow use the word "man" as an insult by the end of Season 7, the fact that Buffy reviles the shamans who created the slayer line despite the fact that they saved mankind many times over, that women in-universe are better than men at absolutely everything and of course--femininity equals good. In fact, the only ''male'' character who has shown any competency ''and'' remained good throughout the series was Giles. Angel may also count, since becoming "Angelus" wasn't entirely his fault, but aside from him? We've had a DisappearedDad, Xander, whose most consistent contribution to the team was [[BoringButPractical repairing the damage caused by demon battles]] (offscreen of course), a misogynist villain, and his two incompetent cohorts, Spike's alteration between [[BadassDecay Badass]]/VillainDecay, Robin Wood's attempt to kill a good Spike, a demon whose sole purpose was to ''wreak vengeance on men'' and many more!
522* ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'' has the most powerful witches in the world and the eponymous characters as women. Any empowered men in the show were usually evil or would lose their powers, up until Season 5. Even then, empowered men were usually minor characters or villains. Notably in the series finale [[spoiler: the sisters have BabiesEverAfter. Out of the combinations of three children per family, there is no all-male set]].
523* ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'': Within the context of this show’s ProtagonistCenteredMorality, Olivia Benson is perfect. The only good men are the ones who support her (the main cast) while the world is full of men who, if not criminals, are {{Straw Misogynist}}s or {{Obstructive Bureaucrat}}s. Female criminals are more likely to be sympathetic, while male victims are far more likely to [[PayEvilUntoEvil have done something to deserve it]] or become vengeful killers afterwards. Benson and other female characters regularly express the opinion that women are superior to men and are not treated as {{Straw Feminist}}s, just correct.
524* Many {{sitcom}}s, particularly the family-based ones, run on the "[[WomenAreWiser dumb husband screws up, competent wife fixes it]]" trope, e.g. ''Series/HomeImprovement''.
525* ''Series/MotherlandFortSalem'': Women in the alternate US seem to have higher status than men on average, given that most witches are female from what we see. They aren't disparaged though, and male witches do exist.
526%%* ''Series/XenaWarriorPrincess''
527
528[[AC:Podcasts]]
529* A running joke in ''Podcast/TheAdventureZoneBalance'' is that when the Tres Horny Boys would screw up in a fight (which was often), a far more capable woman would come in to save them. Of the 19 named members of the Bureau of Balance, 13 are male, but many among those numbers either betray the Bureau (Magic Brian), die in comically stupid ways (Boyland), or both (Captain Captain Bane). The remaining women in the cast are incredibly powerful and skilled, far above the Boys (or, rather, far more ''consistently'' powerful).
530
531[[AC:TabletopGames]]
532* Among the Vistani of the ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' game-setting, only women can be the spiritual/mystical leader of a tribe, as males with the Sight are killed at birth to avert their becoming that culture's version of TheAntichrist. Men do direct the mundane day-to-day activities of a caravan, but only with the female ''raunie'''s approval. The overall setting probably averages at 4 or 5, though (quite a number of domains are socially backwards by D&D standards, or have darklords with varying degrees of sexism, among them TheBluebeard--yes, ''that'' one).
533
534[[AC:VideoGames]]
535* ''VideoGame/ArcanaHeart'' has an all-female cast, and it appears that only women are capable of forming contracts with the various Arcana (a summoner is called a "maiden"). Furthermore, every office in every named institution is occupied by a woman (or, more commonly, a teenage girl). Barring a few of the Arcana, the only named and clearly sentient male characters are two demon lords (one who is never seen and one who has been reduced to a skull-headed staff), one demon-wolf-thing, and a drawing that has come to life.
536* All the important characters in ''Franchise/TouhouProject'' who actually do anything are female. There are a few male characters but their roles are very limited.
537* While the cast is equal gender-wise, all of the best fighters in ''VisualNovel/MajikoiLoveMeSeriously'' are women. The men are either NonActionGuy strategists or simply fighters overshadowed by the women.
538%%* ''VideoGame/EmbricOfWulfhammersCastle''.
539* In ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'', both the protagonist and the antagonist are female. The background characters — turrets and personality cores — are all female if you go by voice, with the sole exception of the Morality Core (who doesn't speak) and the Anger Core (who is voiced by a man and does nothing but snarl).
540** [[VideoGame/Portal2 The sequel]] technically has more male characters than female, but almost all are secondary or equal to new or preexisting female characters: Wheatley, the deuteragonist, acts in a supporting role to Chell and is explicitly a huge idiot; the Announcer is a pre-recorded voice that was probably never sentient and has little presence after the first chapter; Cave Johnson is a posthumous character present in voice only, whose success was mainly thanks to money and {{Hypercompetent Sidekick}}s (including another female character, [[GirlFriday Caroline]]); the male turrets and cores are merely defective counterparts to their female predecessors, present mostly for comic relief; and ATLAS (male) gets equal billing with P-Body (female).
541* ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'' developed most of the female cast than the male ones. Beatrice is the TheChessmaster who pitted Battler Ushiromiya into a game of wits and logic in order to solve the Rokkenjima massacre if it's done by magic or not. The other witches such as Bernkastel and Lambadelta are proven to be [[MagnificentBastard Magnificent Bitches]] in their own right and the female members of the Ushiromiya family have their own personal stories, particularly with the mothers. Among the male cast, Batler, Kanon, Kinzo, George, Rudolf, and Willard H. Wright are the only ones who have standout personalities and stories with Kinzo's backstory on how everyone got into this mess while Rudolf has some HiddenDepths with Kyrie, particularly in Episode 7. However, Hideyoshi is the least developed character and Krauss is the least competent family member despite being the eldest son.
542* ''VideoGame/{{Shantae}}'' has numerous male characters of various importance, but the most important and competent characters are mostly female. The two main (female) characters are Shantae herself, a strong and level-headed half-genie, and Risky Boots, a scarily competent villainous pirate. The most important male characters are Mimic, an old relic hunter whose discoveries kick off the plots of the first two games but mostly isn't very helpful; Bolo, who's dumb as a brick but [[InformedAbility allegedly]] a good fighter; and the Pirate Master, who is incredibly powerful and dangerous, and the main concern of the third game, but completely unheard of until then.
543* ''VideoGame/PanelDePon'' has only a few male characters, most of which are monsters or other villains. All of the protagonists except for Kain are female, and the only on-screen ruler in the series is a woman.
544
545[[AC:Webcomics]]
546* ''Webcomic/{{Drowtales}}'' in story (about 25% of the lead characters are male). Drow society is quite matriarchal.
547* In ''Webcomic/SparklingGenerationValkyrieYuuki'' the main protagonist can become a Valkyrie, but it permanently [[GenderBender turns him into a girl]].
548
549[[AC:WebOriginal]]
550* Tex from ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue'': Oh my lord Tex, one of the only female characters is also one the [[PunctuatedForEmphasis Most. Badass. Characters.]] EVER; just take a look at [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke9wtbzGjCI this]] (she's the one in black armour).
551** Further exemplified by Agent Carolina, who was recognised as the best Freelancer before Tex came along. And boy does she kick ass.
552** The men usually run on RuleOfFunny, but [[TookALevelInBadass take several levels in badass]] over the course of the series. And the male Freelancers kick tons of ass, they just don't have as much focus as the female Freelancers (excluding Washington and Maine).
553
554[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
555* ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'' falls into this. While the show does a good job of portraying depth in their main characters, it's sadly noticeable outside the main cast. The female characters are universally portrayed as more sympathetic than the male characters. Many of the male antagonists are incredibly one-dimensional and often are used as StrawmanPolitical. Even more telling is how in every case of abusive parents, the father is always portrayed as worse than the mother.
556* ExecutiveMeddling-enforced version in ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic''. Although it's not that females are explicitly ''better'' than males, it's that since the show's target audience is little girls, there were barely any male characters at all, and even when later seasons balanced out the cast with more recurring males it's still up to the females to do everything whether they like it or not. InUniverse, it's a type 5; on occasions when male characters do show up, it would appear that they're more or less on equal footing (hoofing?) with the females.
557** Played with in many cases.
558*** Big [=McIntosh=] has SuperStrength enough to pull a house off its foundations without trying, and he only appears to be surpassed in this regard by the Alicorns, Celestia at least, but probably Luna, Cadence and Twilight as well.
559*** Shining Armor's shield spell (which surrounded all of Canterlot) is larger and stronger than anything Twilight ever pulled off, even after becoming an alicorn. Cadence (an Alicorn) made a similar barrier around the Crystal Empire, which is larger than Canterlot.
560*** Discord at least equals, if not surpasses, Celestia and Luna at the same time. Though while Big Mac and Shining Armor are heroic and likeable figures, Discord is (even after his Face Turn), an immature and infuriating troublemaker.
561** Later Seasons (roughly from Season 6 to 9) are closer to 5, with more prominent male characters appearing and the pre-existing ones getting more CharacterDevelopment and Focus.
562* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'' epitomizes this level. Though one episode featured a villain who was a StrawFeminist trying to convince the girls that all men are dogs and that women are superior, as a lesson that this ''isn't'' the case. And there was the Rowdyruff Boys, whose debut episode had them handily outclass the girls in physical strength.
563* ''WesternAnimation/StarVsTheForcesOfEvil'' falls into this category. Star Butterfly is a magical princess who can wield a wand. While the main male characters like Marco Diaz and Tom Lucitor are shown to be quite competent and powerful figures in their own right, Star as well as the women in her family are much more powerful. [[spoiler:In the Season 3 finale, the magically-experienced Tom gets hit with a dose of TheWorfEffect just to show how powerful the monster-Mewman hybrid Meteora is]]. In the show's lore, Mewni, Star's home planet, is a magical matriarchy where only Mewman women can undergo "Mewberty" and transform into [[SuperMode godlike butterfly creatures]]. In the royal Butterfly family, only women can wield powerful magic, so the throne is always held by a long line of queens; the only exception was Jushtin the Uncalculated, who became the first male heir to the throne and the first male mage. But his mother, Queen Skywynne, was pressured into superseding his claim in favor of his younger sister and "rightful" heir, Solaria the Monster Carver. It is also implied in lore that men can only gain political power by marrying a Queen, and even then they're treated as glorified consorts whose only roles are to give the Queen a successor and make the Queen look good.
564* ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' stars a superpowered, all-female race called the Gems. Steven, being half-human, is the only male gem, and being just a kid, is constantly outshined by Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl. Even the human characters exemplify this, with Connie training to be an expert swordfighter before she was even a teenager, and Sadie being able to best huge gem monsters despite having ''no'' training. Meanwhile, male characters such as Lars, Greg, and Ronaldo are noticeably less skilled. It's reversed a bit more as the series goes on, with Steven becoming more competent and capable, and Lars gaining [[BackFromTheDead a few interesting traits of his own.]]
565
566[[AC: RealLife]]
567* Any ''Series/MeerkatManor'' fan will know that even though meerkats don't really have one sex that overdominates the other, the main individual in charge is almost always a female.
568[[/folder]]
569
570!Level 7: Can't Stand Men, Can't Live Without Them
571Men are jerks and there's nothing good in living with them, because they only think about sex and how to get a partner under their thumbs. However, living without them is hard too--there are things that should not be the concern of women, or simply require brute strength to get accomplished. Also, there's one thing that makes males necessary--procreation. Simply, you need a man if you want to have kids, and if there's one thing they're good at, it's making kids.
572
573[[folder:Examples]]
574
575[[AC: AnimeAndManga]]
576* ''Manga/BlackBird2006'' portrays men as such, being perpetually perverted and finding pleasure in hurting women, especially when they depend on them. And it doesn't seem women can actually do anything about the dependency.
577* ''Manga/{{Arachnid}}'' [[ImprobablyFemaleCast doesn't have a lot of major male characters]] to begin with, and most of the ones that do appear seem intent on proving that AllMenArePerverts, being somewhere on the spectrum from sleazy to predatory.
578
579[[AC: {{Film}}]]
580* ''The Unsaid'': Girls want to give love to men and how do they thank them? They beat them up for the flimsiest reasons.
581* Music/JenniferLopez's ''Film/{{Enough}}'' is mostly about what jerks men can be but the heroine can only come out on top after an AdrenalineMakeover… courtesy of a man.
582* ''Film/TheFirstWivesClub'', while being a more comedic take on the level, has most of its comedy relying on making men pay for their horribleness, but still being in need of male company in the end.
583* ''Film/WaitingToExhale'', a movie where nothing positive can possibly come from a relationship with a man. It doesn't matter how faithful, enduring, patient, or loving you are, men will eventually screw you over. Why? They can't help it, it's their nature.
584
585[[AC: {{Literature}}]]
586* Strangely, this is where ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey'' lands, with its rather unsympathetic portrayal of rich and powerful men and yet, strangely, it also combines it with the second level (Whores, whores, whores...) since it also implies that women are venal at heart and willing to do anything to latch onto a rich, powerful guy, especially if he's attractive.
587[[/folder]]
588
589!Level 8: [[ComicBook/AllStarBatmanAndRobinTheBoyWonder Out of the Way, Sperm Bank]]!
590[[LadyLand Governments are ruled by women, wars are fought by women and all important functions in the society are in their hands]]. Men are useless and there's not a single thing that women couldn't accomplish without them. Except for one--procreation. That's the only reason men weren't slaughtered already. But they are still reduced to second-class citizens at best, and to sex slaves at worst. In other words, this is just a complete inversion of Level 2.
591
592[[folder:Examples]]
593
594[[AC:AnimeAndManga]]
595* Many '''Harem''' series these days fall here (especially if they are {{ecchi}}-oriented) but generally only if [[GirlPowered only the girls can gain powers]].
596* In ''Manga/OokuTheInnerChambers'', a plague has decimated the male population, leading to a complete inversion of gender roles in medieval Japan. The feudal lords are all females, and men are regularly sold as prostitutes by their own families or bartered into marriages with high-ranking officials.
597* ''Anime/QueensBlade'' lands here. Men are occasionally in positions of formal power, like the priests and noblemen of Hinomoto, the ruling council of Elves, Count Vance, or the goblin who owns Branwen (who has shown that she can escape whenever she pleases and is just a masochist), but in all cases, they rely on women, who are the sole source of martial power in that world, aside from some armed men like bandits and such.
598
599[[AC:ComicBook]]
600* In ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHercules'', Artume almost turned Earth into that kind of place, with women in charge since the beginning of time, most males as second-class citizens, and the few men that survived, including Hercules, labeled as terrorists.
601
602[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
603* In ''Literature/ABrothersPrice'' by Creator/WenSpencer, women outnumber men by about 20 to 1 (or more) so polygamy is the norm. This is not the fantasy that men might envision. Society is completely matriarchal. Men are basically property and can be sold or traded for money or a husband for their mothers or sisters. Men also take care of the home and children while women work and fight. The male protagonist is not exactly a DamselInDistress, but more of a [[SpiritedYoungLady Spirited Young Gentleman]] than a traditional male hero.
604%%* Drow society in the ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms''.
605%%* Creator/MelanieRawn's ''Literature/TheExiles'' series.
606* ''If I Pay Thee Not in Gold'' by Creator/MercedesLackey and Creator/PiersAnthony. Women are the ones with magic (of conjuration) and in charge of things, while men are slaves. Those men that do get set free are treated like second-class citizens and have to live in a walled-off section of the city.
607* The ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'' novel ''Literature/TheCourtshipOfPrincessLeia'' featured two examples in succession. The Hapan Consortium has been a matriarchy for centuries, to the point of having a female monarchy in the Queen Mother, whose son's wife will reign after, but not him. Their attitude is summed up in the saying: "Never let a man believe he is the intellectual equal of a woman. It only leads him to evil." The Witches of Dathomir, meanwhile, are a matriarchy of female Force users (women alone use the Force on this planet; they show surprise, upon meeting Luke Skywalker, that a man ''can'' use the Force, but this is because they weren't taught, as later books show Dathomiri men learning to use it). Men have the roles we associate with women, such as caring for their children, cooking, cleaning, etc., while being explicitly referred to and treated as slaves. Even Luke is enslaved, albeit briefly.
608* In the ''Literature/{{Lensman}}'' novels, Lyrane II is like this. One of the carrots offered by the Boskonians in the Lyrane subplot of ''Children of the Lens'' is the promise not only of power but of technology to enable the women to do without males at all. If they accept and succeed they'll be replacing the Kalonians, who are almost the exact ''societal'' opposite--but who biologically cannot completely discard their women (for reasons which were [[ScienceMarchesOn obvious at the time the books were written]]).
609* Creator/UrsulaKLeGuin's short story "The Matter of Seggri" is set on a planet where women naturally outnumber men by something like fifteen to one. At adolescence, men get sent away from their families to live in castles, where they participate in competitive sport and, if they do well enough, join the staff of their local "fuckery" where women pay to have sex with them. Meanwhile, women marry one another, raise children, and run every other aspect of society. By the end of the story, due to alien intervention, the sex ratio is becoming more equal and men's role is starting to be re-evaluated. One male character expresses his ambition to live as women do: "I want to be a wife."
610
611[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
612* In the Creator/GeneRoddenberry TV-pilot film ''Planet Earth'', the PAX team led by Dylan Hunt encounters a society where the women rule the man, and in many ways, reverse 20th Century gender roles, attitudes, and behaviors. This is a favorite of Roddenberry's: he [[RecycledInSPACE uses the exact same society setup]] in the Season 1 ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E13AngelOne Angel One]]".
613* There was an episode of ''Series/{{Sliders}}'' in which men were kept in camps for breeding purposes because in that world Saddam Hussein unleashed a bioweapon during the Gulf War that attacked the Y chromosome. Women were unaffected, but most of the men and boys were wiped out. The remaining men were put into breeding camps to repopulate their respective countries and because artificial insemination was never discovered on this Earth, procreation could only be achieved the old-fashioned way--sex.
614%%* The Drahvin society in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' serial Galaxy 4.
615
616[[AC:Webcomics]]
617* The government in ''Webcomic/{{Drowtales}}'' runs under this principle seeing as women have a higher status than men (not to mention being physically larger than the men) and only a few men have fairly important positions. There is a growing male rights movement in the story, but it's mostly been implied and not focused on much.
618** This probably comes from the fact that the original D&D Drow have a strict matriarchal society, created and kept in power by their demonic goddess.
619** The Sarghress clan is a major exception--males can aspire to leadership and some levels of equality, although this still ruffles some feathers among the females. Sarnel was picked to be squad leader ahead of several females and Rosof Tions is the head of a major house within the clan--something ''unheard of'' in Drow history. It's fitting for the clan theme as Quaintana's main motive is to break the status quo, the denial of BlueBlood superiority, and the principle that [[RecruitedFromTheGutter there is gold to be found in the gutters]].
620* The setting of Webcomic/ErikaAndThePrincesInDistress invokes it as a deliberate inversion of level 2. Women occupy the stereotypically masculine functions and vice-versa. The comic is not shy about being a deliberate AuthorTract on gender equality and deconstructing traditional gendered roles.
621
622%%[[AC:WebOriginal]]
623%%* Lovable Weirdos in ''Website/NationStates'' falls into this.
624
625[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
626* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': InUniverse in "The End of Serialization as we Know It". Cartman imagines a future where Mars is populated and run exclusively by women, while men are relegated to underground mines to produce the only two things that women need from men: sperm and jokes.
627* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' The Dathomiri Nightbrothers are completely subservient to the Nightsisters, to the point where the Nightsisters chose "mates" by competing with them in a battle, and slaughter the competitors just to find [[WorthyOpponent one worthy]] of being their servants. The ExpandedUniverse novel ''Literature/DarthPlagueis'' takes it even further by claiming that the Nightbrothers are killed after child is conceived.
628
629[[AC: RealLife]]
630* In spotted hyena society, males hyenas always get the short end of the stick and are always found at the bottom of the social ladder. The [[LadyLand dominance of female over male in hyenas has gotten so deeply rooted in Hyenas]] that even the highest-ranking males rank below the lowest females no matter what. Males are also smaller, weaker, and generally more submissive than females. Even their penises are minuscule compared to the female pseudopenises, which are essentially enlarged, mostly external clitorises/vaginas. By comparison, females can be so vicious and the unfairness to gender equality in Hyenas has gotten so bad that it's not uncommon for baby girl hyenas to try to overpower and kill their boy littermates ''just seconds'' after birth.
631* This is to an even greater extent in Hymenopteran eusocial insect colonies (e.g. ants, bees, wasps), where the only role of males (drones) is the have sex and then die. On the other hand, all worker ants are female and the colonies are "led" (who only produces eggs, instead of doing the jobs which a human monarch does) by a queen.
632[[/folder]]
633
634!Level 9: Men? What Men?
635Women rule the world, men are all either castrated slaves or [[{{Gendercide}} extinct]]. Women live in a StrawFeminist Utopia with superior technology or some kind of [[SceneryPorn nature paradise]] to emphasize how women are CloserToEarth and are either happy lesbians or simply celibate. Genetic engineering takes care of procreation. On occasion, there is nothing sexist about it when the fiction takes place in a realistically women-only setting (like a realistic women's prison), but this happens far less often than in Level 1. This is also an example of ChromosomeCasting.
636
637[[folder:Examples]]
638
639[[AC:{{Anime}} & {{Manga}}]]
640* ''Anime/{{ICE|2007}} – The Last Generation'' takes place in a setting where all men died and the remaining women fight over ideological differences (if they should or shouldn't bring men back) and an ICE (which is the only thing that can help them reproduce).
641* There are male students usually used for background decoration, or at best getting a quick line or two in a scene, but ''Manga/AzumangaDaioh'' has only three supporting male characters, and one of them is a dog and another is imaginary [[MindScrew (possibly)]].
642** Many other school-life gag series in the vein of Manga/AzumangaDaioh, such as ''Manga/LuckyStar'', ''Anime/PaniPoniDash'' and ''Manga/SayonaraZetsubouSensei'' (not so much that one since the main character is male) usually fall into this as well.
643* In ''Anime/MiyukiChanInWonderland'', there are ''no'' male characters, just a bunch of [[SexyWhateverOutfit attractive, costumed]] women who [[EvenTheGirlsWantHer all want to get in Miyuki's pants]]. Justified, as it's taking place all inside the eponymous Miyuki's head, and it's all but stated outright that she's [[TransparentCloset a closeted]] lesbian or bisexual.
644* In ''Manga/NewGame'', virtually every character who receives any amount of panel time is female, and the few male characters are often obscured (for example, Tsubame's father communicates with his wife and daughter by firing arrows with messages, something that actually becomes a plot point). In the case of Eagle Jump, the main characters' company, it's explained that Shizuku has a preference for cute girls in her department, but the France-based Blue Rose company also has mainly women.
645
646[[AC:ComicBooks]]
647* Amazons from ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' comics live on a separate island, without any men. In ''ComicBook/{{Planetary}}'', their {{Exp|y}}ies also have technology a thousand years more advanced than the rest of the world. They were planning to send an emissary that would usher all mankind into a new golden age. However, they were still slaughtered by The Four. Somewhat downgraded/averted in ''WesternAnimation/SuperFriends''.
648* ''ComicBook/YTheLastMan'': in a setting that's practically asking for it, it avoids claiming that women need a man to fix things--the world is messed up to start with because half the human race has suddenly died, including most political, business, and religious leaders, transport infrastructure (pilots, sea captains, and truck drivers) and law enforcement, but things steadily improve over the next five years--or that women are better off without men messing things up--there's still no shortage of greed, lunatics, or violence among the women left behind.
649* In, Franco Saudelli's comics about the cat burglar ''The Blonde'', all the characters are women, and sexy ones at that. There might be a man or two showing up in the background on rare occasions, but with one possible exception (a one-shot character; a boy general, over shot with youth serum), every single character with any kind of substantial or important role is a woman, as are most of the walk-on cameos and background characters.
650
651[[AC:{{Film}}]]
652* This was parodied in the Polish movie ''Film/SexMission'') where two male protagonists wake up from hibernation in a world where all males were killed in a nuclear war. Women live underground and their community denies the existence of males. However, [[spoiler:their leader is in fact a crossdresser who somehow managed to survive the end of the male race, and the movie ends with our heroes manipulating cloning machinery to create new boys]]. Keep in mind that this movie was made in the times of communism and was one big metaphor about living under the control of a communist party.
653* The 1999 made-for-TV film ''Last Man on Planet Earth''. This is something in between "Out of the way, sperm bank", "Men? What men?" and "Full Gender Separation". All but about 2% of men have been killed by "Y chromosome necrosis", a deadly disease that kills only males. Once they outnumbered them enough, women didn't miss a beat in revoking all human rights from the few male survivors and banishing them to the wilderness without any assets. A female scientist genetically engineers a male (since contrary to the title of the movie, there actually are still quite a few men in existence on Earth, the point of this experiment is not clear). His meager attempts at friendliness are met with extreme hatred and violence [[spoiler:and he is eventually murdered by being infected with the disease by the government and doomed to a painful death because the women who comprise civilization believe that men are hateful and violent murderers and they don't want to contaminate their civilization with the presence of someone like that]].
654
655[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
656%%* ''Goodmother Night'' by Rachel Pollack.
657* The world of Whileaway in Joanne Russ' novel ''The Female Man'', is all-female, with the men having been wiped out ages ago by a plague[[note]] though there's a hint or two that it might instead be a result of the women winning a global war of the sexes[[/note]], and is unabashedly utopian.
658* In Joan Slonczewski's ''A Door Into Ocean'', male protagonist Spinel gets sent to a world like this as an exchange student/cultural ambassador.
659* Creator/SheriSTepper, again. ''Literature/TheGateToWomensCountry''. Males and females are strictly separated, with the exception of a few quasi-eunuch servants. Women live in technologically advanced, walled city-states tending toward CrystalSpiresAndTogas; while men are relegated to primitive camps outside the city walls, restricted to a much lower technological level, in a caricature of [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy warrior culture]]. Men are used for reproduction, but only according to a strict breeding program intended to breed out any aggressive or otherwise stereotypically "masculine" traits.
660* Pamela Sargent's ''Shore of Women'' also takes place in a world where women live in walled cities. In this case, men live in hunter-gatherer bands and any attempts at organization by them are stopped by death-ray equipped drones. Reproduction is via artificial insemination only and the men never see women in the flesh even when summoned to provide genetic material. The women have sufficient stored sperm to carry on indefinitely and periodically consider wiping the men out entirely, but in the interest of genetic diversity haven't done so yet. Male children are mind-wiped and expelled from the women's cities at the age of four or five.
661%%* ''Literature/{{Herland}}'', by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is the UrExample of this level.
662* In ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'', Azania is at this level, a highly advanced near-future economy whose mostly lesbian inhabitants raise their clone daughters, gestated in artificial wombs, without any male input. They are also rather [[AmazonBrigade militaristic]], and [[StrawFeminism consider]] their society a model for all the world to emulate--Though given [[AfterTheEnd what]] the [[AppealToForce rest]] of the world [[NoWomansLand looks]] like, this is less unreasonable than it might have been. The major part of Azania's story in the book concerns a war with its worst enemy, a (by present-day standards extremely sexist) traditionalist Christian state.
663* ''The Cleft'' by Doris Lessing imagines that the first human society consisted only of women, who become pregnant more or less at will. Every so often a child is born with a monstrous deformity - that is, with a penis - so the "clefts" leave "it" to die; however, these are sometimes rescued and reared by wild animals, eventually leading to the existence of a colony of males.
664
665[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
666%%* ''Series/{{The Outer Limits|1995}}'' episode "Lithia".
667* "Love Gods" in ''Series/{{Sliders}}'' features an Earth where a biological weapon killed almost all of the planet's men.
668* In "Consider Her Ways", an episode of ''[[Series/AlfredHitchcockPresents The Alfred Hitchcock Hour]]'' based on a novella by John Wyndham, a woman travels forward in time to a future where a scientific accident has wiped out men and women live in a parthenogenesis-enabled caste system.
669
670[[AC:VideoGames]]
671* Microprose's ''Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender'' features a planet filled with militaristic women. It's only later in the game that you learn that there was a war involving the two sexes, the end result being the women wiped out all the men via biological warfare. Not only did women have to reproduce by using the aforementioned Gender Bender to temporarily change into men, the virus used had an unintended side-effect of making the women incapable of having male babies ever again.
672* Platform/PlayStation2 RPG ''Nuga-Cel'' informs you outright at the start that absolutely no men will be appearing in the game, not even as [=NPCs=]. The (male) narrator who informs you of this is fired on the spot, never to be seen again. Although the player character is male, he is never seen or heard, unless [[spoiler:you get a particular ending where he becomes the final boss]].
673* The Asari from ''Franchise/MassEffect'' do ''technically'' fall into this, being a race of GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe, being all biologically female, not requiring a male (or even one of their own species) to procreate, and having the most advanced tech and most graceful architecture in the galaxy. In addition, they all have biotic powers and have a natural life span of around one thousand years (barring injury, illness, or death, of course) and in general are viewed as wise, peaceful beings. Although, since there is no (and never was a) male counterpart to the asari, it's argued that they are "genderless" (but just happen to fit all the traits of a human female). However, they are also stereotyped as the sex objects of the universe. Every species known is attracted to them, they are considered naturally beautiful and adept to sexual promiscuity, there are asari strippers everywhere, and many of the important asari characters show off skin or boobs. So, in short, they fit both the tropes of the StrawFeminist utopia ''and'' women as sexual objects.
674[[/folder]]
675
676!Out Of Scale Level: Full Gender Separation.
677Men and women live separately. There are two divided communities (Possibly going as far as to resemble [[BizarreSexualDimorphism entirely separate species]]), each with members of only one gender. There are only homosexual relationships (if any at all) and neither gender needs the other to survive. Even the procreation problem [[HomosexualReproduction was som]][[MrSeahorse ehow solved.]]
678
679[[folder:Full Gender Separation Examples]]
680
681[[AC:{{Anime}} & {{Manga}}]]
682* ''Anime/{{Vandread}}'' presents two gender-separated colonies, Tarak and Mejale which is locked in a constant state of SpaceColdWar. Tarak is the Orwellian, industrial, militarized planet of men. [[FoodPills All food is synthetic, flavorless pills.]] All public gatherings are related to sports, marching, and being manly. Everyone wears a uniform. [[UterineReplicator Babies are made by merging your genes with those of your buddies in a factory]], and they are raised by dedicated orphanages-schools. Mejale is the AwesomeButImpractical planet of women. All things are polished and shiny. All military uniforms are [[{{Stripperiffic}} excessively flattering]]. Appearances are all important. The citizenry form couples, of the lesbian [[{{Seme}} top]]/[[{{Uke}} bottom]] variety, called the "Oma" and "Fama" in the native vernacular (probably derived from ''homme'' and ''femme''), and make babies by merging two eggs and implanting them in the Fama. They eat real food and celebrate real holidays, like Christmas.
683* The Zentraedi in ''Anime/{{Macross}}'' are this in the original ''Anime/SuperDimensionFortressMacross'' and ''Anime/MacrossDoYouRememberLove'', as men (Zentraedi) and women (Meltrandi) are kept in completely separate social systems.
684* A world in ''[[Literature/CrestOfTheStars Banner of the Stars]]'' is gender-segregated, being a prison planet after all. There is a part where men and women are allowed to live together... but they must be sterilized beforehand.
685* Two islands in ''Manga/FrankenFran'' have been divided by gender since about WWII (they reproduce by cloning, but by the present day, they both know that they can't sustain themselves for much longer). After an initial honeymoon period, [[spoiler:they're so prejudiced, socially/emotionally stunted to the opposite sex, and hyper-aggressive they annihilate each other within a week. ''One'' baby was produced/survived, and it's a hermaphrodite]].
686* ''Futanabi'', an early one-shot by Creator/KentaroMiura, takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where males and females have been separated into different colonies, unaware of each other's existence. When the protagonist meets a girl who crossed over illegally from the female colony, he at first assumes she's some weird type of boy, and having no knowledge about sexual reproduction he assumes his attraction to her is some kind of fever or illness.
687
688[[AC:ComicBooks]]
689* Creator/MarvelComics character [[ComicBook/FantasticFour Thundra]] comes from a future where men and women are in a state of war and use artificial methods of procreation. Her daughter, [[ComicBook/SheHulk Lyra]], (born in vitro with use of [[ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk Hulk's]] cells) gets a little {{Retcon}} of this: Her world is set AfterTheEnd, where women created an advanced society while men degenerated into a bunch of wild tribes who worship old superheroes as gods.
690
691[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
692* One of the worlds featured in ''The Female Man'' by Joanna Russ is one where men and women are at war with one another. Near the end of the novel, the principal characters (four versions of the same woman from perpendicular dimensions) visit the men's side, and one of the women tears a man limb from limb. Here, though, each gender ''does'' need the other to survive, so they develop a {{squick}}y prisoner-exchange program of sorts.
693* ''Literature/EthanOfAthos''. Shortly after the invention of the uterine replicator, a religious group that believed women were the source of all sin established an all-male colony world.
694* One of the ''Literature/TimeWarpTrio'' books has the boys travel back to when cavemen and cavewomen were refusing to have anything to do with one another. Fortunately they help the two tribes patch things up, ensuring the survival of the human race.
695* ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive'' features an unusual cross between this category and true equality. In human society, there are very strict rules on which things men can and cannot do, and equally strict rules for women. For example, women are not allowed to be soldiers or know how to fight, but men are forbidden from learning to read or write. Both genders occupy roles absolutely essential for the function of any society.
696* In the ''[[MarsAndVenusGenderContrast Venus and Mars]]'' series of self-help books, men live on [[OnceGreenMars Mars]], where they place a high value on work and status, as well as build a telescope to [[ThePeepingTom gawk at the Venusians]] (and eventually [[BenevolentAlienInvasion a spaceship to visit them]]). Meanwhile, women live on Venus, which is said to be a PleasurePlanet full of museums, salons, cafes, and the like, where they [[DreamingOfThingsToCome dream of handsome princes from far away]] and chit-chat with each other all day long. After the Martians arrive, they take their Venusian wives/girlfriends to Earth, and things are great for a while...but since they aren't used to each others' ways of communicating or values, [[LoveRuinsTheRealm they come into conflict]].
697
698[[AC:VideoGames]]
699* A [[AllThereInTheManual supplementary work]] for ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' states that this is the case for the Viera due to their isolationist tendencies, which is why you only see the females.
700* ''VideoGame/GenderWars'' had men and women as completely separate societies in a constant state of war. Both sides reproduced artificially, although they occasionally had to raid each other's labs for genetic material. A big part of the humor is that both sides are composed entirely of negative stereotypes, to the point that it's completely absurd that either one can remotely function.
701
702[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
703* PlayedForLaughs in the episode 'Love Struck!' of ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'', where Timmy wishes for said separation because he is fed up with girls due to a failed Valentines day. This causes the world to separate into the dirty and urban Himsdale and the clean and idyllic Hersdale, divided by a great wall. The episode ends with Timmy and Cupid working together by destroying the wall and making both genders fall in love with each other again.
704%%* Also played for laughs one episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Duckman}}''.
705[[/folder]]

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