Is protagonist identification/empathy influenced by the reader's gender?
I had a discussion with someone who claimed she'd once read (though she couldn't remember the source) that men can identify and empathize with male as well as female protagonists, while women identify better with female protagonists (the claim being, they can certainly sympathize with male protagonists, but identification is harder).
To me, this seems like a gross and peculiar generalization (though it's hard to say more about it without knowing the source). Still, if it's hypothetically valid, it would create some odd dynamics in stories with a male protagonist and a female antagonist.
I was wondering if anyone has heard of anything related to that - if you also remember any possible source, it'd be a bonus.
(4)4 Comments
Sorted by latest first Latest Oldest Best
The fact is that females are grossly under-represented across most fiction. There have been various studies to mathematically prove this (here's one: seejane.org/research-informs-empowers/data/). Studies like this show that often there are very few women at all, or there is only one named female character (and they are usually a love interest, or in some way their role is tied to being a woman in a way that doesn't happen for the male characters), or there are a few, but still vastly lower than 50%.
The skew in representation has a huge impact on what we consider normal and how we view the world.
This imbalance would definitely lean towards the opposite of what your friend stated - it would suggest that women would find it easier to identify with and empathise with a male character, because they have so much practise at it. They are expected to do it all the time.
Whereas, men would find it more difficult, because it's not something they are required to do very often.
That this is more likely to be the case is supported by the anecdotal stories that publishers don't believe that boys will read stories with a girl as a protagonist, but don't worry so much about girls refusing to read about male protagonists - such as Harry Potter.
The Hunger Games and Divergent are happy modern exceptions to this, and let's hope they are a sign of changing times, where people care more about the depth and charisma of a character than their gender.
I've had a related discussion with my wife two weeks ago about whether there's anything significant about men writing a female protagonist and women writing a male protagonist. For example, Robin Hobb writing about FitzChivalry, or Witi Ihimaera writing about Paikea.
In the end, my wife and I concluded together that the protagonist's gender is really only a small part of what makes a reader identify or empathize with the protagonist.
The larger part that causes the reader to engage with the protagonist is how similarly or dissimilarly the protagonist's experiences and objectives match the readers own life experiences and objectives. We found that my wife's upbringing and my own upbringing have lead us to enjoy and desire different qualities in our protagonists.
Also, in some cases, a secondary character induces a sense of identity and empathy that may also not align by gender. For example, my daughter connects more with Draco Malfoy over Hermione Granger. Go figure.
Here's a secret for you. If there were an article that stated, "that men can identify and empathize with male as well as female protagonists, while women identify better with female protagonists", and if your personal experiences and objectives align with this statement, then you may be much more likely to consider the article to be truth.
men can identify and empathize with male as well as female protagonists, while women identify better with female protagonists (the claim being, they can certainly sympathize with male protagonists, but identification is harder).
Anecdotally, I would consider the reactions of a percentage of male fans to the all-female Ghostbusters, Daisy Ripley's Rey in The Force Awakens, and the female lead of Rogue One, just in the past year, to refute this assertion.
Obviously I am also speaking in gross generalities, but seriously: male leads have dominated fiction in most media for, like, millennia. American fiction is finally reaching a point where female leads are starting to show up more often in bigger-impact works, and a certain subsection of the audience is losing their tiny bigoted minds. These men don't want women to be protagonists in the entertainment they interact with because they cannot empathize or identify with female protagonists. Those female-led stories are outside their experiences, and it makes them uncomfortable and upset when they, and their stories, are not the focus of the tale being told.
There have primarily been male protagonists for a significant majority of time and fiction, so by default, any female readers would only have had male protagonists to emphathize and identify with. Women simply haven't had the option of a woman being the main character driving the story in a Star Wars movie before now. Not that Leia didn't kick ass and keep her head, but the journey was clearly Luke's. So little girls had the option of playing "Leia, the sidekick and love interest," or pretending to be the hero, Luke who is male. (Or Han, the snarky sidekick. I confess I never met anyone who wanted to be Chewie.) Now little girls can be Rey.
I have no particular statistics to back up my assertions either. I think the answer to your question may be yes, but in the opposite way your friend claimed.
The opposite of this rule, that both men and women identify with a male protagonist, but only women can identify with a female protagonist, has long been used as a standard pretext for focusing exclusively on male protagonists in movies and books. The logic is that you halve your audience with a woman in the lead. Similar arguments are often made against films with black and other minority leads.
However, the science indicates this is entirely spurious folk wisdom invented to justify internalized prejudices.
Terms of Use Privacy policy Contact About Cancellation policy © freshhoot.com2025 All Rights reserved.