Town Leader Gender Bias?

[*Wiro]

My female leaders are also played by a man. It appears to be a trend among male players. EchoMan is definitely onto something here.

[Faith]

Oh my...
I have four female leaders. And I know more female leaders played by women.

PS: I'm a woman...just in case

[miirkaelisaar]

I can say I know two current female leaders who are for sure played by a female, among others including some who no longer play cantr.

Also one of my female leaders, to be honest, doesn't identify with any real gender. She's been called a Queen before even though she's not royalty, but she prefers Mayor and never corrects people on the radio who mistake her voice for a male because she doesn't care about gender specifics (though it's been a while since that's happened) She dresses "fashionably tough" I'll say, kind of a biker, but for all intents and purposes she considers herself as much man as woman. Just, it's not something she's ever really discussed with people, just in her own mind. She's super private about things like that.

[hyrle]

I'm a male player. I have four town leaders - two female, two male. I have two male ship captains. I have both males and females who assist town leaders or who in the past were assistant leaders. I also have both male and female that are "non-leaders" - with varying degrees of independence. I also have a few loners - one is female, the other two are male.

I like maintaining a mix of character types because it allows for my characters to have different personalities. I never really thought about gender in any of it. I play two-thirds male characters and one-third female.

[Andu]

Maybe female characters(played by players of either gender), are more or less subcontiously leaning to be less violent with female characters, and old player may end up with more female characters than male, thus leading to more than avrage amount of female leaders.

Now that I think about it, not a single one of my female chars have died, but I have had my pile of dead guys over the years. Only one of them have been a town leader of sorts, rest have been male. (1 to 3 ratio in leader gender for me)

edit: Also, being a leader involves caring for newspawns in most places, so I guess that's also a female stereotype? [/endspeculations]

[Snickie]

Wait, you mean this was a thing on what players you play that are leaders? I was just listing my characters' circumstances with regards to leaders. I don't actually play any leaders right now.

[ObsessedWithCats]

I think at the time you posted your thoughts were in line with everyone else's - every character's leader(s), not just the characters who are leaders themselves. The conversation's just drifted a bit since

Five of my characters have permanent homes with one or more leaders. Of the five, one (female) is the leader (though it's a very small town), one (male) is part of a mixed leadership pair (small-ish town), and three have female leaders only and are not leaders themselves.

[Faith]

Wait, you mean this was a thing on what players you play that are leaders? I was just listing my characters' circumstances with regards to leaders. I don't actually play any leaders right now.

No, it wasn't; but It evolved to a: "How many of all of these female town leaders are actually played by female players?"

[bnlphan]

I only have one female character left. She is town leader by default since the population is 1.

[Snowdrop]

Out of my 8 characters, there are not many in towns that are officially led anymore

Upon spawning though:
- one was in a town with a leadership group consisting of 2 females and 2 males. One of the males has since died, one of the females was in a long sleep when mine spawned, but then woke...but has since fallen into a deep slumber again.

- one spawned in a town with 2 female leaders and 1 male sort of next in command. The two females died, so the male took over but is now also deceased, and my character is now the oldest in a small group sailing around, so sort of looked up to by the others, but reluctant to lead officially.

- one with 2 male leaders who both fell into a long sleep before eventually having heart attacks. My character is now default leader along with the other permanent resident, though there is another character who's been in town a long time and a more recent one or two who might end up staying.

- one spawned where it was stated there wasn't really a town leader, but there was sort of 2 males and 1 female who held the keys to storage and stuff, one of the guys sleeps a lot the other is very wakeful, the female has wakeful moments but seems to be a lot sleepier these days than before. My character is now also a key holder for the storage.

- one spawned in a really sleepy little place with a retired leader and a sleeping replacement, who died within a year of my character spawning, because they couldn't be given food. My character then took on the responsibility and is my only proper, completely official leader...but doesn't like to call themselves 'leader'.

- one was in a town that was still in the early stages of being built, the founding group was meant to be a council, but one was asleep since before mine spawned, 3 others were out gathering resources and when they returned, one of them became very sleepy, one ended up losing the plot and things got messy and weird and confusing and altogether rather blaaah after that

- one was in a town with just the 1 female leader, who had become very sleepy and has recently died. So...sort of leaderless, but there's only about 4 of them there, so... *shrug*

- one spawned in a town where there was 1 female leader, who has been sleeping a very, very long time now. There's a couple of others who are sort of the leaders now, but quite frankly, my character has never considered themselves to be 'led' by anyone. They pretty much just do whatever they fancy doing!


So...at the time my characters spawned, there were... 3 female led towns, 1 male led, 2 mixed, plus another mixed but very, very loosely led, and 1 town where leadership was rather a bit in the air.

These days, the leadership structure hasn't really changed much for 2 of my characters and they're not a part of it (mixed leadership groups, but more male led these days), 1 is in a sort of female/male led town (but they're often kinda sleepy or out of town), while another 3 (2 males/1 female) have had leadership fall upon them/their very small group, 1 female officially became leader early on and the other (male) is out on their own, sort of nomadic, but with favoured towns that they like to visit and spend time in.

As for whether female leaders are actually played by females...I'm non-binary, so...uh, N/A?!

Basically...to put it very simply: it's complicated!

[miirkaelisaar]

I only have one female character left. She is town leader by default since the population is 1.

I had a male character like that too, he was the only person there so technically was the leader. I guess he considered his animals citizens though, at least the birds. He did talk to them and order them around sometimes...

[Joshuamonkey]

Oh! I should have noticed this thread earlier. Something I noticed a long time ago is that, at least for me, my female characters seem to be better at living than my male characters. Only one of my oldest characters is male, while I have three old female characters, and two are significant leaders. And I decided to stop spawning female characters many years ago. Most of my characters have been leaders, and two male leaders I've had have been killed because another male leader wanted to get them out of the way (and those leaders died not too long after), yet I've never had that happen with a female character.

Take Doryiskom for instance..Tessa, Madeline, Zara, Stacey, Stephanie, Asryi. There were male leaders as well (like Little John, Surname Firstname, Rutho), but their leadership didn't last very long.