There's been a lot of talk about the lack of women in the superhero genre and the lack of female characters in, well, everything lately, and it's been on my mind lately because while I'm a male writer, one of my main goals with The Indestructibles was to make every character essentially gender-neutral. I didn't want strong female characters, I wanted strong characters of both genders who were not defined by their body parts (though the book does have a somewhat female character slant percentage-wise).
Wrote up a piece for my website today on how it's everyone's responsibility, male and female writers alike, to write better characters for women who aren't defined by the "strong female character" trope but are rather strong characters who are also female. Felt strongly about it that I wanted to repost the link here. I don't just want my friends' daughters to grow up with role models of as many stripes as their sons do--I want their sons to grow up reading about female characters who are as complex--good and bad, flawed and admirable, heroic and evil--as their male counterparts.
What are your thoughts on the current state of fiction? Are we doing enough to improve the gender gap?