Gender balance

[Amy Z]

No: HPFGUIDX 14852

Stacy said from atop a very nice, top-of-the-line, varnished soapbox:

"No strong female characters in Harry Potter . . . All Hermione's good 
at is school . . . Blah blah blah."

Well, articles might say this, but I didn't!  I notice that a few 
posts responding to mine point out that there are strong female 
characters in HP...giving me the impression that I have disappeared 
and been replaced by a Straw Feminist who shouts ridiculous things 
like "Hermione is a weakling!  McGonagall doesn't understand 
Transfiguration!"  Such a figure would be easy to knock down.

There are *some* strong female characters in Harry Potter.  Hermione 
is good at *lots* besides school.  Besides, her being so good at 
school is itself against stereotype, especially because we know she 
particularly loves Arithmancy, which, whatever it is, is mathematical, 
and excels at logic, specifically in contract to the Boy Hero (Snape's 
poser in PS/SS, and Harry thinks it again when he comes to the Sphinx 
in GoF); both of these are subjects where boys supposedly excel and 
girls falter.  Right on, Hermione!  Right on, JKR!

What I am saying is that if you made a list of male and female 
characters, you would find that the important characters are very 
heavily weighted toward the m side of the list.  I would say that the 
six most important characters, going by page time, how well we know 
them, and how much we respect/care about them, are (in no particular 
order):

Harry
Hermione
Ron
Hagrid
Dumbledore
Sirius

Whether McGonagall would be #7 is arguable.  I'd go with Snape, but it 
depends on how much weight you give to page time/importance and how 
much to respect/liking.

Ministry officials:  *all* who are named are men (we do encounter 
unnamed "ministry witches").  

Hogwarts teachers:  the majority are men.  It is *not* 50/50.  Look at 
the most important teachers, and the imbalance is worse.

Quidditch players, even on Gryffindor:  the majority are men/boys.  To 
JKR's credit, the remark that Slytherin has no girls on its team is a 
clear sign that sexism is associated with Pure Evil.  (As it should 
be! <g>)

One thing JKR *doesn't* do is make men out to be nicer, better, 
smarter, etc. than women.  The men play most of the unflattering 
roles, as well as most of the nice ones, and their flaws run the 
gamut, from Evil Overlordship to vanity.  JKR's women and girls are 
very admirable--at least, as admirable as the men and boys are.  Where 
she falls short is in numbers.

Someone did a study some years ago in which they had people read 
sections of textbooks and then answer questions about how many of the 
examples used were female (e.g. girls' names in word problems, things 
like that).  They found that people consistently overestimated the 
number of female references.  Make a textbook scrupulously even in its 
male and female examples, and readers will perceive it as biased 
toward the female.  This is why tokenism works; make one character of 
the top six female, and many readers will perceive it as being even.  
Make one DADA teacher of 5 female, and many people will perceive that 
as even.

Amy Z

------------------------------------------------------
 Feminism:  the radical notion that women are people.
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