Occupations

Back when I first learned to read, I noticed that men in the stories had a large variety of jobs, while women had a very limited choice - mother, nurse, teacher, airline stewardess, secretary. Even in science fiction it took awhile before I encountered stories with women who were pilots, doctors, professors, captains, owners of companies, soliders, admirals, or leaders of colonies. Once I did find an author who wrote about women working the same jobs as men (not in a spotlighted manner, but just as if it was perfectly normal in that society), I hunted for more of her or his work.

Representation is important.

I've blogged before about gender roles, mainly in fantasy. But this is a topic that bears repeating.

In the real world, the glass ceiling hasn't been completely broken yet, but the cracks are still spreading. Gendered terms for occupations have slowly dropped out of usage - authoress, stewardess, hostess, actress (still in use but slowly fading). I don't automatically assume a doctor is male. I have worked with nursing students at a university long enough to know that not all nurses are female, either.

So where could someone come up with a list of occupations to use in a science fiction world? I start with what jobs exist in the present and spin off from there. The Occupational Outlook Handbook details numerous jobs in the U.S. Seventh Sanctum has a page of generators. The one under Classes/Professions allows you to choose a category (cyberpunk, fantasy, science fiction, or steampunk) and create a list of occupations for that universe.

Role models don't always have to be the main character. What about secondary or background characters? When I need a walkon character - someone to do something to help the main character (or villain) and not be seen again - someone identified by a occupation, I'll choose the occupation first, and then decide, does this character need to be a man or a woman? Does it matter? And if it doesn't matter to the story, why not a woman?

When you read, do you occasionally check to see how many male characters are mentioned versus how many female? Do you notice their occupations?

Diversity in YA

This past Saturday I moderated a panel at World Fantasy Convention (held this year in Toronto) entitled "Diversity and Difference in YA Fantasy." The other panelists were Cinda Williams Chima, Megan Crewe, E.C. Myers and Cheryl Rainfield. The panel's description focused on strong female characters, but the panelists (YA authors all and as rebellious as YA authors can be) went with the title.

We discussed the importance of having diversity not only among the secondary characters in YA but with the main characters as well. More and more readers are interested in seeing their 'face' in the story. The idea that the default for a main character should be 'boy' (as the books I grew up reading seemed to be) is losing strength at last. The popularity of The Hunger Games demonstrated that boys would read stories with girls as the main character. The idea that the default for a main character has to be white and straight should be the next to go.

Megan Crewe related how she was told by agents how her manuscript, set in Japan, would be difficult to sell. Esther Friesner's Spirit Princess and Gloria Oliver's In the Service of Samurai are both set in Japan with Japanese main characters, so perhaps that is changing.

People of color as main characters have begun appearing in YA, but there have been reports bookcovers were changed to depict a white character. Justine Larbalestier's Liar, Cindy Pons' Silver Phoenix and others have been affected this way. This might be due to a marketing decision, but more people need to speak out against it.

LGBT characters have begun to appear as secondary characters, but there needs to be main characters as well. Cheryl Rainfield's Scars has such a character. Her recent blog is about the World Fantasy panel and (as she promised at the panel) she has provided a link to books with LGBT characters.

Religion has also been addressed in recent years. YA and middle grade books such as the Percy Jackson series, the Goddess Girls series by Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams, Darkness Rising Book One of the Catmage Chronicles by Meryl Yourish, Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch, and Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst have main characters from nonChristian religions.

There were many excellent questions from the audience. Some were from readers trying to find books with diverse characters while others were from writers interested in creating diverse characters.

For the readers, finding these books are not always as easy as going to a bookstore. Some bookstores still have YA as a general catchall, with YA paranormal shelved with YA sports. Big bookstores like Barnes and Noble have subcategorized YA, which may benefit browsers, but not those looking by author's last name. Books with people of color sometimes are misshelved in cultural studies. The advantages of ebooks are that many are searchable by tags, but often readers have to rely on lists on the web (such as provided by Cheryl Rainfield above) to find titles.

The writers in the audience wanted to know how to write about different cultures respectfully. The example was brought up of books where the only person of color was the villain. Points the panelists brought up were that stereotypes are still not the way to go. The more diversity you have in your book, the better. But having diverse characters in your book doesn't mean that your story has to be about discrimination or prejudice. You're just creating a more realistic world.

If you're worried about being accused of cultural appropriation, as long as you have researched the culture, talked with people of that culture, treated it respectfully, and, if possible, found a beta reader to make sure you haven't made any missteps, you've tried your best.

You don't want to have your story be a checklist of some kind, or a message or mission book as that will turn readers of any age off. No one likes to be preached to. There will be times when, due to your story's location or time period, that your characters may need to be from one race or culture. But if they don't, do all your characters - even the walk-ons - have to be white and male?

The panel also brought up the benefits of small press for those having problems finding a market for books with diverse characters. Small press and ebook publishers are willing to take chances on stories with new and diverse voices.

Megan Crewe and Cheryl Rainfield also blogged about the panel.

Gender Roles

I've always very conscious of the roles/career choices of my characters. Part is definitely due to the time period in which I grew up as well as the character gender roles in a lot of the fantasy and science fiction stories I read or watched at the time. Which is why I'm going to react here to a post by N.K. Jemisin "The Limitations of Womanhood in Fantasy" and some of its comments. You can read it for yourself, but what I took away from it was the impression that some think the pendulum has swung too far in regard to the reaction of many writers trying to write strong women characters: i.e., that there are too many swordswinging female characters in fantasy.

Now, I realize that what one considers 'too many' may be due to when one starts reading. I grew up at a time when female main characters were rare. Females were always background characters - part of the crowd scenes or the prize at the end of a story. Fantasy did have some strong female characters in the Oz books (one did not mess with Glinda or Ozma) but in The Lord of the Rings, Eowyn, valued for her manor-keeping abilities, had to disguise herself as a man in order to be the person she wanted to be - and then she was given away as a prize at the end. [imho]. Females in general were valued for their cooking or sewing or manor-keeping skills.

Then women started to become the fighters as well as the keepers of the hearth. Girls who watched Uhura and Nurse Chapel in the original Star Trek (excuse the sf example) could find role models for their daughters in Princess Leia and Captain Janeway and even Xena. Lessa of Pern was a dragonrider as well the manager of a weyr. As someone who was told repeatedly both in person and via stories and media that I couldn't do something because I was a girl, to me this change was very welcome. For me, there can't be 'too many' stories with strong female characters or characters who choose a career or role outside of the 'normal' gender role. Or even within, so long as it is their choice and not something society forces on them. I hate it when people automatically decide that the female in the story, whether on a quest or in a village, has to be the cook or the child rearer.

Sometimes it seems as though the writer has to create an ensemble cast, much like the friends in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, in order to keep the critics at bay. For every female character that likes adventure but disdains "frou-frou"s (Applejack and Rainbow Dash), you also have to have the fashion expert (Rarity) and cook (Pinkie Pie). Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series has something similar with characters able to handle different types of magic: thread (which includes weaving), plant (which includes food as well as medicine and crops), lightning, and fire (metal-working).

Some of the commenters were unhappy with books where the female character can't sew and 'thinks she's better" than other women because of it. Couldn't this character be a role model for those who can't sew and were continually put down because of their lack of this so-called essential female skill? Why is the lack of a skill suddenly shorthand for someone 'thinking she's better' than someone who possesses the skill? Would it be better if someone who couldn't cook felt miserable all the time because of that? Or wouldn't you want a character comfortable enough with herself to be able to admit she's not good in a particular area? Though, if that was the point of the story - the growth from 'I can't do this' to 'I can't do this but that's okay because I can do this other thing' - that would be different.

Fortunately, YA fantasy usually focuses on a young person learning what they can do. For every young girl wanting to become a knight (such as in Tamora Pierce's Alanna series or Protector of the Small series), there's a young girl whose skill in decorating hats leads to her discovering her own magic (Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle). For every girl who wants to learn about magical beasts (such as in Patricia McKillip's Forgotten Beasts of Eld), there's another who just wants to learn magic (okay, in Diana Wynne Jones' Year of the Griffin, the young girl is a griffin, but there's also Diane Duane's Young Wizards series or Hermione in Harry Potter).

I definitely agree with the conclusion of N.K. Jemisin's piece, that what is needed is more variety of female characters. Writers to write them and readers to want to read about them. Discussion is a good first step.

Do you have any favorite female characters in fantasy?