Gender Ratios in Comics

[Dorian_Grey]

I don't think gender matters in terms of the story you want to create unless it has a theme of say: a fight against sexism or something blatant.
It's difficult to have a even binary male/female character ratio. But I have done (as @joannekwan suggested) is flipping a gender role, and keep all of the attributes I had originally assigned to the character with past work and my current comic, and it has yielded very interesting results!
I tend to gravitate toward male characters more sometimes; but to fix this as an example, one or two characters ended up as strong "masculine quality" females ...instead of originally being males. This of course is only applying to the singular gender roles of "male" and "female."
It is worth a shot at least if you are looking for variation of some kind. But I think as long as the story is interesting and you are enjoying your time making it, gender shouldn't really matter too much.

[Luie]

My gender ratio is way off. This was unintentional, but it makes sense because of who the main characters are and what people they hang with.

More female characters tend to seem "forced", but the ratio means nothing as long as the gender minority characters contribute equally to the story. For me, that just means I made all my wimmens badass and interesting, even if they don't share the same amount of panel time as other characters. I also have a few male genders with more feminine personalities, but it had nothing to do with evening the ratio.

[VermillionWorks]

Eh, if it the story works better with just the three guys and one girl, then don't worry about it. Don't put in random females just to get the ratio right, you could screw up your story that way or they could end up not having much of a role anyway because you're not interested in them. I'd rather see a couple of really well-written ladies then a whole lot of pointless ones, same goes for men or any characters really.

If you can come up with some interesting females that fit naturally into the story, then great, otherwise I wouldn't worry about that too much.

[Vikiro_Hop]

I'd say we are at the point where you shouldn't force anything to try and make up for diversity. As long as you are not intentionally excluding people then it is your story write it the way you want.

@joannekwan also as others have point out, flipping genders while maintaining the traits is a good option. A gender isn't all there is to an identity and there have been times when developing stories where I decided the main character's gender would be better flipped.

[AnnaLandin]

Representation/diversity is always nice to have, but don't do it just to tick boxes. That way lies tokenism.

HOWEVER - I'm chiming in with @joannekwan. Is there any reason why one of the three male characters can't be female? Is the story structured specifically around them being male/is their maleness central to the story? If not, you can just have one of them be a girl, and your problem is solved. You wouldn't have to change anything else about them; their personality and skills could stay the same, it's just that they're female now.

It's the same with gender as it is with skin colour and body-shape - the question you should be asking yourself is "Why can't this character be [x]?".

[windikite]

I sort of disagree with needing to have any gender represented in a story. It's just nice. Sailor Moon was targeted towards teenage girls, and so has an all female main cast with a couple guys in the background, either as villains or love interest. Dragon Ball Z is a bunch of dudes and a couple females fighting it out doing manly things Look at ouran host clob. It's all guys with one girl, but that too can be for girls based on the stories and traits your characters show off.
so the real answer imo is to not "shoot for a certain ratio", it's contrived, and people will know you just filled a quota. The only caveat to this, is that if you have 0 representation of a gender then you may run into problems, like me and touhou. So stick with your 3:1 ratio until you come up with a cool female character that fits. Maybe try thinking of certain lines said by different genders. You may find some unique reasons to make them girl or boy. Or whatever.

[TrustyShamrock]

i think im pretty split down the middle with dude and undude characters. i guess most of the main ones are girls but i didnt really think too much about it. but yeah like @joannekwan said the characters arent that different dependin on their gender. it doesnt really matter too much. ya just gotta do a little switcheroo with the he/she/they dealio and dont worry about the rest. and maybe also character design dependin on how gendery they look

[scythe]

Yeah, don't change things just to get to some arbitrary percentage. Change things if they make sense and will improve the story.

[getsuart]

Hmmm... I turned two male characters into female characters, because it lacked of women. The draft of their personality didn't change at all, and I think they would be the same, male or female (a loving mother and a kickass archer living in trees).

It depends who you want to talk to.
It's good to think that you don't have enough men, women, pancakes or crepes, but don't overthink it. You don't have you represent everyone unless you're talking about those kind of problems or if it is something you really want to talk about. If it's coming from you, then add it, it's your choice. If you're only thinking about ratios, forget it.
Just don't make them stereotypes if you use them (like the black guy talking like a "black guy" stereotype... jeez.).

[HaloCapella]

So far my comics generally consists of almost pure female. Its all because I want to. >:3

If you want to balance out or diversify then reconsider before making changes of your story. Nevertheless, its your choice.

♪♪

[kazukitakamura126]

I like to make the gender ration even so the cast seems more realistic because guys and girls both exist in this world. As far as personalities and troupes you apply to character you don't have to be gender specific. For example instead of the big person in the cast being a man you can have a very masculine woman. Another example is instead of the girl being shy you can have a shy male. This is how i character type my cast, my antagonist is the sister of the protagonist and she is a brilliant and charismatic person something you rarely see in female characters.

[Kayke]

I think it's hard to break out of this sort of thing since most of the media we see in our daily lives is male dominated.

I know in my comic 2 of the 3 main characters are male and I feel bad about that. But I think if I did a tally of every important character in the comic, not just the main three, it would break about even.

I would say try to get as much representation (gender/race/so on) in your comic as possible, but don't just tack on a girl character for the sake of doing so. I like the advice that @joannekwan gave about flipping one of the male characters if possible.

[infectedbloodcomics]

Right now I have both genders equally represented, but the main characters are three women. The guys were all at the very beginning of my comic. Well, that's the way it is. My comics are women-centered. I will have stories with more balance, but women will always be predominant by design.

[eagle1]

Since all of my titles are currently telling different parts of the same story, I tend to look at them as a whole. On that basis, while there are certain comics that are unbalanced for various reasons, the collection is very balance with a slight bias towards the female (because I like writing strong women).

Eagle
(the first three covers show more women than men)

[Alli]

Just write your story. You don't have to force in characters just to meet some sort of ratio. Even if the world was 80% men, you could have a comic that only contained women and whatever other genders you felt like including because it's your story and you could do whatever you want with it.

[Caelestie]

Hmmmm again male and female is a reference to a biological reality. Meaning sex. It is not a gender. Could people stop saying it is a gender when it isn't.

[Caelestie]

Honestly I hate it when people think it is forced to have 50% slip in between the sexes. Because in real there is more female than males. It is actually 51-49%. The only reason it feels forced is that most stories are created by men and therefor the write what is closes to them. There has been many studies that have shown that men in general have a hard relation to woman. It isn't the case for woman. I do think it matters writing female character because they are not well represented and women need to feel represented for our own self esteem. Also more well written female character the more ease male writer will have with them to their stories.

so the real answer imo is to not "shoot for a certain ratio", it's contrived, and people will know you just filled a quota. The only caveat to this, is that if you have 0 representation of a gender then you may run into problems, like me and touhou. So stick with your 3:1 ratio until you come up with a cool female character that fits. Maybe try thinking of certain lines said by different genders. You may find some unique reasons to make them girl or boy. Or whatever.

Again why is it only contrived when it is someone other than a male or a white person or straight person.
Can you answer me that? That because that way of thinking is contrived.
And no most media is filled with male character that are well written but not as much female characters.
So yes this person need to think outside the box in order to make a story that is interesting and that diversify their world. It can add a lot. Though again the setting can make it hard for diversity and that is fine. But there always been exception to the rules.

It's good to think that you don't have enough men, women, pancakes or crepes, but don't overthink it. You don't have you represent everyone unless you're talking about those kind of problems or if it is something you really want to talk about. If it's coming from you, then add it, it's your choice. If you're only thinking about ratios, forget it.

You can write for example a gay character without writing homophobia. Not all world need to tackle homophobia in order to add a gay character. They can exist without the fear. Plus if they are not gay themselves it would be hard for them to write that particular part of the character and they don't need to.

[williamjbowles]

It's kind of a tricky situation, and there's no absolute rule that will work every time.
Generally, yes; You should try to keep things roughly equal. But there is bound to be some variation, and in a group of four, a ratio of 3 to 1 is really only off average by one. And the last thing you'd want is for the group to feel forced, like those shows or whatever where they're all white except one token black character who was clearly only thrown in to meet some mandatory race quota. Of course there should be diversity in characters (race, gender, and more), but not if that diversity is cliched and even offensive.
What I'm getting at is that if three male and one female character is what your cast is, it's fine. Don't try to force a female character in a way that feels unnatural or staged. If other female characters show up later on, that's fine. But don't make it feel like you're meeting a quota. Your characters are more than just numbers on a spread sheet.

Whatever you decide, good luck with your story!

[JigokuNeko]

There are multiple problems with gender representation in media. Mostly because of the bullshit opinion that girls will read stories about boys but boys will not read stories about girls. So, most stories have a boy protagonist because it is somehow considered the "default". According to a research, if there are more than 17% female characters in the background of a scene then people actually think that there are more women than men even if the percentage is still way below 50%.

Like a user above said, if there isn't a specific reason within the story for the "male" element of the character then why the necessity for so much bratwurst? But in the end things get real problematic if the main character(s) are all male and the only roles for secondary female characters are girlfriend and mother (ergo, they exist only for the male characters). That is so bad it's worse than the contents of the back of my fridge. By contrast if there are fleshed out female characters about then it evens out a bit.

[apocryphagraphics]

Gender has both meanings medically. It can mean the biological state of being male or female or the traits associated with masculinity and femininity, etc...