This 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.
True 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.
Level 1: There are no women.
There are no female characters in the story, or there are very few, but they serve as nothing more than background for a bunch of males, and don't do anything of note. None of them are more than a minor character, and female protagonist/antagonist are nonexistent. Mind you there
may be nothing sexist about it - there can be a legitimate reason for the lack of women, such as stories being set places where women are not allowed (nuclear submarine or similar).
- Used in Ai No Kusabi to justify Cast Full Of Gay.
- 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.
- Likewise, in Master And Commander, the only women that appear in the film are part of a party of native traders that resuply HMS Surprise.
- John Carpenter's The Thing.
- The Hobbit.
- The Good The Bad And The Ugly: 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 three-hour film. Forcible rape, incidentally, is on Tuco's Long List of prior offenses, which is entirely Played For Laughs.
- Lawrence of Arabia, famously.
- The Shawshank Redemption, 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 gets out. A good case could be made that the poster and film clips of Rita Hayworth 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.
Level 2: Whores, Whores, Whores...
In this kind of fiction, all female characters are either complete sluts who will screw around with anything that moves or helpless sex-slaves whose sole purpose of existence is being raped or taken advantage of by male characters.
Of course, they enjoy the rape.
Level 3: Male Superiority
Women are useless and most of the time don't do contribute anything. If they are in trouble, they can only wait to be rescued. Also, they are never in control of anything - 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
The Chick and
Distressed Damsel are here.
Level 4: Men are more equal.
At this level it looks like both genders are equal.
Or Are They?. Then why do only males have all the cool and most offensive powers and equipment, while their female teammates do things like providing first aid, being
Mission Control, working in the laboratory and you would be damned if you will ever see any of them in an actual fight. And even if the go into a fight, they ended up either defeated easily, insignificant in the overall victory, or end up
fighting another girl. Every unlucky
Action Girl that lives in world set at this level will suffer from
Chickification and eventually turn into or be revealed as a
Faux Action Girl. At this level, men and women are equal, but
some things are still a man's job.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! - Most of the time a girl wins in Duel Monsters, it's an unimportant duel that we see only in a cut-scene, and those on which plot is focused and have been won by girls can be count on one hand.
- Similiar in GX, where Asuka is considered among the seven best duelists in Duel Academy, but we see her having a victory in a plot-important duel only twice.
- In Macross, humans are here. A major plot point is how subversions of this status quo begin to appear.
- In Final Fantasy Tactics, this seems to be more story based rather than game play which is more even.
- Dungeons And Dragons is down the middle in terms of gameplay, though in story, it depends on the campaign.
- Ever since The Spy Who Loved Me, most James Bond movies have fallen under this level. The older ones are entirely Level 3.
- Gundam series directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino tend to go here. In some cases, those by other directors backslide toward level 3.
Level 5: Almost Perfect Equality.
Things that portrays both genders as an equal or are at last trying to balance
The Chick and
Distressed Damsel with
Action Girl or subvert/justify them fifth here and women may be protagonists. It's almost impossible to make a completely perfect balance of both genders, especially in story aimed for one specific audience (like
Shonen or
Shoujo) - sometimes girls don't get full respect only because story is just too focused on boys and vice versa. That's while many of examples here are works that, while is still impossible to tell they portray both genders as an completely equal, are just more balanced than level 4 or 6.
- In ShugoChara,later on they let the boys transform but occasionally focus issues come up. Nagihiko gets focus but he's Nagihiko!
- While Bleach is more focused on Ichigo and we have two Distressed Damsel, there's justification why both Rukia and Orohime aren't doing anything while being imprisoned and we have Yoruichi and Soi-Fon, two powerful female shinigami who proved themselves in a fight with very strong enemies.
- Another woman, adult form of Nel, almost killed Noitoira, Arrancar who gave Kenpachi a hard fight in a fight.
- Vizards' power rank is based on how long they can stay with their masks on. At first time Ichigo lasted three minutes, while Mashiro took 15 hours to reach her limits.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 6 wich breaks series tradition of male protagonists with Joelyne.
- In 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 bad ass women as there are bad ass men.
- In Avatar The Last Airbender, almost perfect equality is reached.
- Just one more reason to love it.
Level 6: Women are better than men.
In this trope, women often prove their superiority and are always the protagonists. Men, while still competent (usually), are only supporters at best.
- Most of Magical Girl series fit here. Boys cannot be chosen ones, or fight evil with magical powers (except if they will get Gender Bender). However, they can still be helpful by being themselves and provide source of "something to fight for" for heroines.
- The most prominent example of this is Sailor Moon, with Mamoru helping by just saying Usagi to never give up, and three boys who help Sailor Senshi via turning into magical girls themselves.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer is perhaps the best known Western example. Only young women can gain the supernatural abilities of Slayers, and when Willow awakened every potential Slayer on the planet, the end result was a worldwide Amazon Brigade of supernatural hunters. It's never mentioned why men can't be Slayers, and you're a sexist pig for even wondering.
- In Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki main protagonist can become a Valkyrie, but it permanently turns him into a girl.
- Book Frostlover and Thorn by Phyllis Ann Karr.
- Tomoe Gozen by Jessica Amanda Salmonson.
- Theanu by Ursula K. Le Ghuin
- Morgaine by C.J. Cherrych
- See any TV advert, at all, certainly in the United Kingdom. Double for products actively aimed at women (cosmetics- although usually constrained to retailers, ref. Boots' current marketing), stereotypically the domain of women (cleaning products, inverted by Flash, kinda) or just with a high female purchaser base (Diet Coke).
- Drowtales in story (about 25% of the lead characters are male).
- Charmed
Level 7: It's hard to live with men but it's hard to live without them, too.
Men are jerks and there's nothing good in living with them, because they only think about sex and how to put a partner under their thumbs. However, living without them is hard to - there are this that should not be concern of women, or simply requires a 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.
- Many of the love stories.
Level 8: All men are dumb and need to be controlled.
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 no single thing that women couldn't accomplish without them. Except for one - procreation. That's the only reason men weren't slaughtered Alfred. But they are still reduced to second-class citizens at best, and to sex slaves at worse. In other words, this is just a complete inversion of level 2.
- In Incredible Hercules, 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 few mainly men that survived, including Hercules, la belled as terrorists.
- The government in 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 have fairly important positions. There is a growing male rights movement in the story, but it's mostly been implied and not focused on too exclusively.
Level 9: Men? What men?
Women rule the world, men are all either castrated slaves or extinct. Women lives in Feminist Utopia with the most superior technology ever, and happy lesbian community. Genetics takes care of procreation.
- Goodmother Night by Rachel Pollack.
- Amazons from Wonder Woman comics live on a separate island, without any men.
- In Planetary, their Expies has also a technology thousand years more advanced than rest of the world and were planning to send an emissary that would introduce whole mankind into new golden age. However, they still were slaughtered by The Four.
- This level was parodied in Polish movie Sexmisja (English title: Sexmission), where two male protagonists wake up from hibernation in the world where all males were killed by pandemic and nuclear war, and women live in the underground and thier community denies existence of males. However, their leader is in fact transvestite who somehow managed to survive the end of the male race, and the movie ends with our heroes manipulating cloning machine to create new male breed. Keep in mind, that this move was directed in the times of communism and was one big Getting Crap Past The Radar about live in land under the control of communist party.
- Deconstructed in Y: The Last Man
Out of scale level: Full gender separation.
Men and women live in separation. All men and women. There are two divided communities, 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 was somehow solved.
- Marvel Comics character Thundra comes from future where men and women are at the state of war, and use artificial methods of procreation. Her daughter, Lyra, (born via in vitro with use of Hulk's cells get a little Ret Con of this: Her world is set After The End, where women created an advanced society while men degenerated into bunch of wild tribes who are worshiping old superheroes as gods.
- The Zentraedi in Macross do this in the first series since men and women are kept in completely separate social systems.
Unsorted/multiple
- Hentai spans the whole scale. Most early works however were close to the low end.
