Analyzing the Gender Representation of 34,476 Comic Book Characters Female characters appear in superhero comics less often than males — but when they are included, how are they depicted?

Strong men; thoughtful women Three out of five comic book characters have at least one superpower, regardless of gender. When we categorize these powers, we find that there are some clear gender imbalances.

The difference in male and female powers Change in % pts

← More female More male →

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NOTES: Percentages are determined only from characters with powers. In DC and Marvel, 62.4 percent of all male characters have powers, and 62.8 percent of female characters have powers. ComicVine lists over 100 possible powers; however, we removed all powers for which the difference between genders is not significant at a 95 percent confidence level when performing a t-test. Definitions are from both Comic Vine and Superpower Wiki.

The data suggest that less-physical powers — such as empathy, intellect, and telepathy — tend to be more represented among female characters. Men however, often have highly physical powers, as well as those that involve gadgets. Female characters dominate in relatively few physical abilities; and those where they do are often tied to gender stereotypes. Pheromone control — the ability to generate and control pheromones that affect emotional and physical states, such as sleep, fear, and pleasure — occurs five times as often in a female character. Sonic scream appears in twice as many female characters as male; and prehensile hair — the ability to control one’s own hair — appears in female characters seven times more often.

Token teams and team members There are over 2,500 teams in DC and Marvel combined. Roughly half of all characters — male and female — are members of at least one team. The number of females on teams is what you would expect given the relatively low number of female characters. That doesn’t mean, though, that female characters are evenly distributed. In fact, 30 percent of all teams have no women, and only 12 percent have more female team members than male. The majority of those 12 percent, however, are exclusively female teams. This means that in actuality, only 4.8 percent of all teams have both male and female characters and have more women than men.

Female percentage of every team Each dot represents one of 2,862 teams in DC and Marvel.

Particularly interesting are the names of the exclusively female teams — Femizons, Lady Liberators, Female Furies, Holiday Girls, Doom Maidens. A third of all exclusively female team names reference their femininity in some way, and if we look at the all-female teams that are five or more members, that number jumps to half. These groups have gendered names in the way that the male teams generally do not. Only seven percent of their male counterparts with five or more members have a masculine naming reference. Given this highly gendered naming pattern, it seems that exclusively female teams are often specifically defined by their femininity.

Men will be men; women will be girls Character monikers follow a similar pattern to team names. Consider some of the most popular comic characters of all time: Batman, Wonder Woman, Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man. Eight percent of both male and female characters have gendered names. However, not all gendered names are equal; some fit a “diminutive” category. These are titles that are the younger, or infantilized versions of another name. For example, “girl” is the diminutive version of woman.

Comparing the balance of gendered names Let‘s look at the percent of female and male characters with equivalent gendered names. For example, we have paired “man” and “woman” as equivalent. Their usage, however, is not balanced: male characters are given “man” far more often than female characters are given “woman”. Interesting imbalances are found between many gendered naming pairs. Diminutive names — those that may infantilize or denote the younger version of a title — are highlighted. Sort by female male Percent female Percent male

NOTES: Percentages are determined only from characters with gendered names. i.e. 13 percent of women with gendered names have “girl” in their name. The names considered “diminutive” are those in red text on the chart. They were chosen by the author, and there are good arguments for both keeping and removing many of these terms. However, the point remains: If we only consider “girl” and “boy” there is still a significant difference: 13 percent for females, 5 percent for males. In some cases, a character with a gendered name will be listed in the Comic Vine database under their secret identity. For example, there is no Ms. Marvel or Batgirl in the chart above. They are listed in the data as Carol Danvers (and Kamala Khan, etc.) and Barbara Gordon.

If we compare the use of diminutive names for male and female characters, we see that 28.5 percent of female characters and 12.6 percent of male characters fit in the category. Females are more than twice as likely to be given a name that may make her seem weak, less dangerous, less aggressive and not on equal footing with male characters.

Marvel and DC are no longer simply convenience-store singles. Today, they’re blockbuster movies, fast-selling merchandise, drama-filled tv shows, and popular video games. The more we see these characters appear in pop culture, the more their representation matters — especially because female characters form such a small fraction of the whole. Carolyn Cocca, academic and author of the Eisner-nominated book “Superwomen: Gender, Power, and Representation”, expresses clearly why this is such an important concern. She writes: “If the constantly repeated story is that women and girls are not leaders, are not working in professional settings, are not agents of their own lives but merely adjuncts to others, and are sometimes not even present at all, it can reinforce or foster societal undervaluing of women and girls... As there are fewer female characters to begin with, each is overburdened with representing women as a group.” To be fair, this problem does not affect comics alone: media in general — including children's literature, cartoons, computer games and even coloring books — have a history of poor female representation and gender imbalance. And often media reflect our world back to us: while only 27% of Marvel and DC characters are female, that number is only 19% for the United States Congress. The good news is that things may be changing. Both DC and Marvel have slowly begun to increase the number of female characters in their output. Our analysis did not consider time-series data (we didn’t have it), and characters change over time — Wonder Woman herself has been a feminist activist, a house-wife, a sexualized pin-up, and a kick-ass hero in her 76 years. However, while some features may be altered, established and traditional characters tend to maintain their names and powers. They continue to carry the representative baggage of their past.