Women Everywhere!

On our planet, about fifty percent of all humans are female (moving towards fifty-one percent, as it were). This means a large number of people you meet when going out on each day should be female, too - unless you live in a society where movement of women is severely limited by the laws. Why, then, does it seem to be so different in stories?

This isn’t just about having female heroes or at least some female members of your hero’s team. This is also about all the people the hero talks to, buys stuff from, asks for assistance. Even if the hero group is just hitting the local tavern in the evening, why is it shown to be filled with men only? Why are the only women around there often the ‘serving wenches’ the heroes can comment on or lust for?

A lot of fantasy novels are based on medieval Europe and at that time reading was a rare skill (even most nobles couldn’t write and read, it was mostly down to priests, monks, and nuns), so the women certainly didn’t stay at home with a good book. Radio, TV, or internet weren’t invented already, so there was little to do for relaxation in your home. As soon as one of the children was old enough to look after the rest of the kids, there was no reason why a woman shouldn’t come with her husband every now and then. A few women peppered in with the men would, therefore, make sense.

As for the ‘serving wenches’ - in most cases, they might actually have been the innkeeper’s wife and children. Families worked trades, shops, or inns together, so the husband might keep the bar, the wife might do the kitchen, and the children would help out wherever needed (taking care of mounts brought in by guests, serving meals and drinks, assisting in the kitchen, taking care of rooms, etc.). Therefore, the innkeeper probably wouldn’t take too well to the heroes interest in his waitresses.

Apart from that, women were far more visible in medieval times than they are in most fantasy stories. As mentioned, trades were a family business, so while the blacksmith was hammering metal into submission, his wife might very well sell the finished products or do the first talks about what the heroes would need. Most likely, she’d be able to tell how hard it would be to repair that sword or she might sharpen their weapons - a less strenuous task than actual blacksmithing.

It’s not unlikely some shops might even be owned by women - women were allowed to own land and operate shops (unlike some crafts and trades, where only the widow could continue the work of her late husband). The heroes could very well be buying their provisions from a couple of women on the market or a woman keeping a store.

Yet, even the side characters which only exist for purposes of giving those heroes what they need more likely than not are male in many cases. It also doesn’t get better in stories set closer to our own reality or in our reality. There are many women who work jobs the heroes could make use of, yet healing (whether in fantasy or real settings) seems the predominant way they come in (that and the love interest). What about the woman who sells guns under the counter? The female hacker? The lady who knows all and sundry (what with women supposed to gossip more than men)? They can exist just as well.

Women make up fifty percent of the world population. They don’t have to make up fifty percent of a hero party (though it would be nice), but they should exist in a story. The heroes should meet them every now and then.

Of course, some will argue that there are settings where few or no women are present, such as a jail or the barracks. While that is true to a degree, those are very specific settings which aren’t used that often in stories. In most cases, heroes pass through regular towns and villages and visit regular places. In those cases, there’s no need to omit women. They’ll be there, so show them.

In case you have a society which does keep women from public spaces, you should think about why that is the case. Are women in that society so rare they need to be protected in every way? Are they not considered fully human? If yes, why? It’s not lightly that any society would confine fifty percent of the populace to the private space. Most societies don’t keep one gender locked away in general, so if you have a society which does that, it should come with good reasons (at least within that society’s logic).

Again, this is not about making fifty percent of your hero party female. While I could think of good reasons to have more than the one ‘tough girl’ in a group of heroes (representation, for one thing, is much easier if you can spread traits and characteristics across several people), there can be good reasons to have more men than women in a group - even no women at all. They could be former mercenaries (in a society where female mercenaries don’t exist) or they could be monks (not all monks are peaceful), for instance.

On the other hand, the more diverse your group is in every aspect, the more ways there are to solve the quests they go on and to win the fights. Just as different types of fighters in a group are good, different ethnicities, genders, or sexual orientations can have a lot of advantages for the writer. They make the world bigger, more vivid, and more lived-in - more organic. The more organic and lived-in a world seems, the easier it is for the reader to live in it, too.

In most cases, your world will have as many men as women around. Keep that in mind when you’re writing a scene. It usually doesn’t hurt when side characters change gender, because they’re just there to perform a service for the heroes. Make your world feel more lived-in and make it diverse and interesting for the reader.