->''There aren't a lot of franchises with more than one, if any, interesting and complex female characters.''
-->'''[[NostalgiaCritic The Nostalgia Chick]]''', ''Top 11 Animated Nostalgic Villainesses''

The Bechdel Test or the Bechdel-Wallace Test is a sort of litmus test for female presence in movies and TV. In order to pass, the film or show must meet the following criteria:

# ''it includes at least two women,''
# ''who have at least one conversation with each other''
# ''about something other than a love interest.''

Now, by limiting yourself to shows/movies that pass the test, you'd be cutting out a ''lot'' of otherwise-worthy entertainment. You may even be cutting out a lot of works that have a feminist tone. But that's the point: too little fiction created today, particularly in TV and movies, has independent female characters. Things have improved since the test was first formulated (the strip in which it was originally suggested was written in 1985), but [[MostWritersAreMale Hollywood]] still needs to be prodded to put in someone other than TheChick.

It's obviously easier for a TV series, especially one with an EnsembleCast, to follow this rule than a film, because there's far more time for the conversation to occur in. For example, ''StargateAtlantis'' is not an especially feminist show, but one episode features two female characters discussing a (female) alien that's attacking them, and in the fourth season the presence of a female commander, a female doctor, and a female warrior meant for a ''lot'' of conversation about something other than dudes. To compensate for this, Bechdel's Rule-inspired analyses of television often look episode-by-episode, or compare the series' compliance with Bechdel's Rule with its compliance with a "reverse Bechdel rule" with the roles of men and women swapped.

Named for Alison Bechdel, creator of the comic strip ''DykesToWatchOutFor'', who made it famous with [[http://alisonbechdel.blogspot.com/2005/08/rule.html this strip]]. It's also called the Mo Movie Measure, after Mo, the main character of DTWOF, but Mo wasn't yet a character when the strip appeared; it's from the early days of the strip before it moved to a serial format with recurring characters. The strip itself notes a film need not be essentially feminist to pass the test, as the last film the character saw was ''{{Alien}}'' (with two women discussing the xenomorph).

Contrast TheSmurfettePrinciple -- Works that follow TheSmurfettePrinciple include a female character strictly for demographic appeal with no real consideration for what attracts the female demographic; works that pass the Bechdel Test have regular characters that just happen to be female and are not [[FlatCharacter flat]]. In many ways, this makes them more feminist than works that try to be feminist. Instead of the existence of "interesting and complex female characters" being hyped and celebrated like a rare phenomenon, it's not treated as the least bit unusual.

Works with a [[PinkBishoujoGhetto largely female cast]] could be considered cheating.
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!!Works that score high on the Bechdel Test:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Anime ]]


* ''HigurashiNoNakuKoroNi''
* ''SailorMoon''
* ''FullmetalAlchemist''
* ''BlackLagoon'', while simultaneously managing to preserve the dignity of the male sex, as does...
* ''GunsmithCats''
* ''NeonGenesisEvangelion''
* ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha''. As Erica Friedman, the ever snarky Yuricon founder, mentioned in [[http://okazu.blogspot.com/2007/11/magical-girl-lyrical-nanoha-strikers.html her blog]] after her encounter with the over-enthusiastic [[{{Shipping}} shippers]] of the fandom, all of the mostly female cast look married to their careers more than anything else.
* ''{{Slayers}}''
* ''CardCaptorSakura''
* ''{{Claymore}}''
* ''SuzumiyaHaruhiNoYuutsu''

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* ''TheLifeAndTimesOfScroogeMcDuck''
* B.P.R.D. from the ''Hellboy'' universe
* ''{{Series/GoldDigger}}''
* ''{{X-Men}}''
* ''{{Runaways}}''
* ''BirdsOfPrey''

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Films ]]

* ''FriedGreenTomatoes''
* ''ThelmaAndLouise''
* ''KillBill'' passes with flying colors: When the women talk to each other, they talk about combat. When the men talk to each other, they talk about [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep The Bride]].
* For all its other faults, ''DeathProof'' also scores high: the second group of four women talk at length about their jobs, funny accident stories, self-defense and gun ownership, the film ''Vanishing Point''. Sex and relationships work their way into the conversation as well, but they're clearly just another part of the women's lives instead of their all-consuming focus.
* ''LegallyBlonde'' -- The protagonist's character arc is all about finding a purpose beyond a love interest, in fact.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

* ''{{Animorphs}}''
* ''TheAssassinsOfTamurin''
* ''TheChroniclesOfNarnia''
* ''TheFaerieQueene'' -- Una with Caelia, Artemis with Aphrodite, Britomart with Radigund (if talking about how you're going to kill each other counts); the female leads Britomart and Amoret mostly only talk about their love interests, but they make up for it with plenty of LesYay.
* ''HisDarkMaterials''
* ''LittleWomen''
* ''PerryRhodan'': Capable women and relationships exist, but if anything, it's the ''men'' who discuss relationships - and not in the "conquest" sense. Might be done deliberately to avert TheSmurfettePrinciple.
* ''WatershipDown'': For all the (justified) complaints about how rabbit society as depicted in the first novel is [[AnimalGenderBender more patriarchal than rabbit society]] in RealLife, as well as females being valued as nothing more than breeding stock, Hyzenthlay and her friends ''do'' meet the three terms of the Bechdel Test.
* Quite a few of the ''{{Discworld}}'' novels, but most especially the Witches and Tiffany Aching series.
* ''ALittlePrincess''
* ''TheSecretGarden''
* ''TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'', and the Oz books in general. It helps that the protagonist is female and so are most of the powerful supernatural entities in the setting.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', although JossWhedon was disappointed people saw his "strong female characters" as the trope GirlsNeedRoleModels. Why do people keep acting like "strong female characters" are so unusual?
* ''{{Firefly}}'', given that River is [[StrangeGirl pretty]] [[PsychicPowers crazy]] ([[MindRape you would be, too]]), and doesn't seem to have any romantic feelings, and Zoe is married and focused on work, it's not too hard.
* ''FraggleRock''
* ''StargateAtlantis'', as noted above.
* ''StarTrekVoyager'' passes this one with flying colors almost every episode, but ''StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' fails surprisingly. Yes, two strong female leads, but they are usually discussing their respective love interests.
** A magazine article dated 1998 (the height of ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' and ''StarTrekVoyager'' era popularity) talked extensively about Dax, Kira, Seven, Torres and Janeway between the two series and its depiction of women compared to the earlier series. When interviewing Rick Berman, he made mention that people seem to have easily forgotten [[StarTrekTheNextGeneration Tasha Yar]], a female ''[[ActionGirl Chief of Security]]'' who grew up in a colony that became a violent gangland. The actress left when she felt she was being underused, and it was just bad luck that the remaining women on the Enterprise were the more passive caretakers.
* The reimagined ''BattlestarGalactica'' was known to fail the reverse Bechdel test, in which there were episodes where two men (the Adamas junior and senior) only talked about women (usually Starbuck and Roslin).
* ''TheMiddleman''. Lacey and Wendy. Art crawl!
* ''PowerRangers'' scores shockingly high for a series aimed at prepubescent boys. Then again, aside from a few seasons it's an aggressively NoHuggingNoKissing franchise.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Theater ]]

* ''{{Wicked}}''
* ''IntoTheWoods''

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* ''AvatarTheLastAirbender''
* ''BatmanTheAnimatedSeries''
** Along with ''SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'', and the DCAU in general...
* ''CodenameKidsNextDoor''
* ''ThePowerpuffGirls''
* ''SatAMSonicTheHedgehog''
* Walt Disney's ''SleepingBeauty'': Scary thought, considering the title character is extremely passive and hardly does anything except sing songs, fall in love, and cry about her arranged marriage. But forget about the princess for a second and look at who gets the most plot time: it's the three good fairies and Maleficent, all females.
* ''TeenTitans''
* ''WhereOnEarthIsCarmenSandiego?'' -- The premise of the show is "{{Kid Hero}}es chase TheSandiego around the world with help from a MagicalComputer." Starring an ActionGirl versus a famous female VillainProtagonist is never treated as anything odd or revolutionary. ''That'' is the feminism judged by the Bechdel Test.
* ''SheRaPrincessOfPower''
* ''{{Jem}}''. Most impressively, ''She-ra'' and this were released in 1985, around the time when the rule was first noticed due to the small amount of popular media that could pass it.
* ''TheIncredibles''
* ''ThePrincessAndTheFrog'' passes the test due to the IWantSong scene with Tiana talking to her mother about how she's about to fulfill her dream of opening her own restaurant.
* All the {{Barbie}} movies.
* ''{{Coraline}}''
* ''{{WITCH}}'' though it is somewhat cheating, as the five main protagonists are all female.
* ''{{Rugrats}}''
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