Effects on Characterization
Never a Self-Made Woman is one major unfortunate implication of this trope: female characters are often more noteworthy for their bloodline or for who their father was than for their own actions. See Daddy's Little Villain, Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter and all the Princess Tropes. In fact, an Always Female trope with a possessive apostrophe in the title will probably fall into this category. May also relate to the differing treatment of a Daddy's Girl versus a Momma's Boy. A girl in the shadow of her father is cute and adorable and, well, expected; a boy in the shadow of his mother is weak and mockable and should be defining himself by his own actions, the first of which being cutting the apron strings.Another of the Unfortunate Implications for women is quite subtle. Research suggests that we divide people into moral actors and moral objects. Moral actors do things; moral objects have things done to them. In other words, the difference between a villain and a hero is far smaller than the difference between either and a Damsel in Distress. When audiences or authors fail to view the evil choices of female characters in the same way as the evil choices of male characters, this trope is in effect. They are removing the agency of female characters and recasting them as moral objects rather than moral actors. This has the unintended effect of lessening the heroism of heroic female characters as well: after all, if it's not a female character's fault if she fails to be heroic or is actively villainous, then no one can really say that it's her choice to be heroic either. The absence of this moral peril in female characters tends to make them very, very, VERY flat when compared to their male counterparts. It also, as a side-effect, tends to produce a lot of 'daughter of the old master' action girls; they're heroes, but only because daddy was one.
A final characterization effect for female characters is the Living MacGuffin. The girl who is mostly noteworthy because she literally is a plot-important object.
For men, the Unfortunate Implications of this trope is that males are judged harshly by their lack of action. If a man isn't advancing the plot by taking action, he generally ceases to be a sympathetic or compelling character. Passive male characters are also unlikely to have innate attributes that, by themselves, are important to the plot, and as a result, the poor guy may end up being disposed of. The significantly high attrition rate of physically challenged men in fiction further attests to this. It also adds insult to injury by insidiously implying that disabled men are "omega males", thus worthless and useless, unless they agree to undertake a "female" role by being Inspirationally Disabled.
Male characters also suffer from a lack of focus on their interior world or emotional reactions to events. This lack of focus on the interior world of male characters—outside of a few stereotypical relationships such as love interest or buddy sidekick—means that the average male hero functions more as a form of Heroic Mime than a three-dimensional character. He is a placeholder for the audience precisely because of his lack of personal emotional reaction- the audience is free to imagine him feeling whatever emotion they themselves are feeling. The lack of emphasis on the interior world of male characters also makes them more difficult to sympathize with. By contrast, the greater emphasis on a female character's interior world and passive attributes creates distance between her and the audience because she and her emotional reactions are on display. They're her reactions, not ours, which we are observing rather than experiencing. Paradoxically, this means audience members identify more with male characters while sympathizing more with female characters.
Finally, men and women are limited in the emotions they express. Men, in particular, are limited to emotions that inspire dynamic, forceful action — such as hate, vengeance, and anger. Women, while recently allowed to explore the more proactive emotions, generally express more passive emotions such as sadness, vulnerability, and happiness. Again as female characters more often portray sympathetic emotions we sympathize with them more. Conversely, we are invited to identify more with male characters as they offer us a cathartic release of proactive but negative and socially unacceptable emotions...usually through killing and blowing shit up. The dichotomy may even go so far as to redefine the word "emotion" to mean "emotion stereotypically associated with women".
Part of this trope refers to how characters function to advance the plot. While male characters will be directly involved in the action (e.g., Action Hero), or manipulating the action behind the scenes in a comprehensive way (e.g., Guile Hero, The Chessmaster, Manipulative Bastard), female characters, when they do take action, often take it in the form of inspiring, motivating or nagging a male character to do something. See Lady Macbeth, Hen Pecked Husband.
And, yes, it also applies to that meaning of "action" as well. Traditionally, women were considered virtuous by their chastity or, their lack of action. Whereas, of course, a "lack of action" for a man generally has negative connotations.
A Marxist Interpretation
Friedrich Engels proposed the subjugation of women was a natural consequence of private property and inheritance law. Societies which pass down wealth and land to their descendants use Altar Diplomacy de rigeur. Two powerful families agree to unite their bloodline and share in the collective inheritance. Love and companionship have nothing to do with the marriage. Hence, due to Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe, societies that rely strongly on inheritance emphasize chastity, virginity, and obedience in their daughters as a form of social control to avoid illegitimate children, which would be considered a breach of contract and, in extreme cases, grounds for civil war between aristocratic families vying to inherit the state.On the other hand, since aristocratic families are technically military commanders responsible for protecting the state and its peasantry, men are shaped into leaders who vigorously protect and safeguard the family and its inheritance. A man who does not demonstrate clear and effective leadership is considered unworthy of protecting (or expanding) the amassed fortune his dynasty controls and the economic framework it exists within. So men are expected to go out into the world and prove themselves through military valor, while women stay at home, preferably pregnant, so that they may produce as many Spares to the Throne as possible to avoid inheritance crises.
Thus, both sexes are saddled with gender roles to sustain the system of primogeniture, which is not generally known for their stability.
As monarchism declined and was replaced with democratic capitalism, the Idle Rich who inherited wealth were overtaken by the archetypal Protestant Self-Made Man who earned it through the warlike conditions of the free market, instead of the actual military (which got a bad rap after the Catholic-Protestant conflicts). Hence, the role of breadwinner evolved into a man who succeeded as a captain of industry. But since wealth was still passed down to his children, the prescriptive gender role of women remained relatively unchanged; the mechanics of inheritance law depended on it. Women were still encouraged to be passive, although due to the rise of Nobility Marries Money and the Gold Digger/Meal Ticket dichotomy, women were given the additional burden of having to be prettier and more appealing than the other available women; like men, they had to beat out the competition instead of relying on family status. They did it by emphasizing their affable personality and chastity while being Gossipy Hens insulting and denigrating every other woman's character and virtue behind her back, completing the gender dynamic fueling this trope.
In Engels's estimation, women would never be truly free until wealth and the factories that produced it were taken out of private hands, like the state had been wrested out of the hands of monarchs. Without a need for inheritance law, the social control of women would be unnecessary. In practice, socialist states like the Soviet Union and East Germany generally had better (although definitely not perfect) track records on women's rights than the west, but a legacy of authoritarianism and stifling economic micro-mismanagement tends to overshadow that.
