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That's a fact: female characters represent almost 17% of all Rick and Morty universe characters.
That's a fact: female characters represent almost 17% of all Rick and Morty universe characters.
As Rick and Morty's popularity grows from the Pilot episode in 2013, the show is hitting a larger and larger audience, mostly teenagers and young adults. However Rick and Morty has been criticized in early seasons, because of the striking majority of male characters across all adventures, some Rick and Morty's questionable treatments of women, or the problematic representation of some female characters, like Jessica and how Morty sexualises her.
When we plotted the gender repartition across Rick and Morty universe characters in our analysis, we seeked information to know whether the cartoon show passed the Bechdel test.
They actually refer to it in an episode! Indeed, a scene from "Nerver Ricking Morty" episode (S03E06) shows Rick explaning to his grandson Morty how the Bechdel test works. Even though this scene takes place in a humoristic context and can be controversial for some people, it's still a proof that the artistic direction does reflect on this question.
The Bechdel Test, explained... by Rick
The Bechdel Test, explained... by Rick
The Bechdel test is a "measure of the representation of women in fiction". For a movie, a series or a story to pass the test, the rule is simple: we must find a scene where two named women characters (1) are talking to each other (2) about something other than a man (3). Historically, this test was born as a kind of gag of Alison Bechdel's Dykes To Watch Out For cartoon strip in 1985. Although this test is more a qualitative than a quantitative measure, and sometimes criticized on the lack of shade, few art pieces of pop culture art passed this simple test actually - unless you replace "female" by "male" characters, which made the Bechdel test more and more mainstream.
By searching further, we can learn that Dan Hamon and Justin Roiland, the creators of the show, became aware of this gender unbalanced consideration, so they really worked on improving it over time.
equity gender in the Rick and MOrty's storytelling direction
equity gender in the Rick and MOrty's storytelling direction
According to an article from Screenrant american news website, "creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland made the decision in season 3 to hire enough female writers that the staff had an equal 50-50 split", because at this time, "all 47 showrunners at Adult Swim were male". "The move to hire female writers was a significant one that gestured at the direction the show was heading", the journalist explains.
If, in a qualitative way, we can observe some improvments in female characters consideration - mostly in season 5, we can study the impact with data as well!
Indeed, let's study the impact of hiring more women in the storytelling direction on female characters ratios over episodes.
By looking at the evolution of the ratio of female characters per episode, we actually notice an global increase of female characters ratio from season 3.
The statistics computed for each season show definitely the great impact of hiring more women in the creation team! Indeed, by looking at the boxplot visualisation, the median of female characters is higher since Season 3. We also observe a high outlier during the third season, and the maximum edge of female characters ratios reaches 50% from season 4. Besites, from Season 4, all episodes have at least 10% of female characters.
Thus Rick and Morty is on track to gender consideration equity, in both storytelling and figures.
REFERENCES:
Article: Rick & Morty Season 5 Fixes A Major Female Story Problem, Sarah Bea Milner, Screenrant
Article: Rick & Morty Promo Hints Season 5 Is Fixing A Problematic Character, Cathal Gunning, Screenrant
Article: Rick and Morty’s Bechdel Test joke exposes a major problem with the show, Dais Johnston, Inverse
Article: Mansplaining The Bechdel Test To Rick And Morty Fans, Rich Johnston, BleedingCool
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