Passing the Bechdel test

My first novel doesn't pass the Bechdel Test, mainly because my two female MCs are never in a room together.

The test is intended to be viewed as an aggregate statistic about a body of work. Its application to an individual story doesn't always make sense. If you're concerned about having enough women in your story, or making sure they have agency, that's a different issue.

POV makes a huge difference, and sometimes it simply isn't practical. Make sure you have at least a couple fleshed out females and no one is going to complain there are no f/f scenes in a male, first person book.

For an example of how it can halfway be done, in my book (close third, not true first) I have the male eavesdrop on two women having a conversation. But, I'm still not sure it really passes the test, because several times he reacts to what's said and the narrative is still "in his head." The thing is, though, it doesn't often make sense to have people spying, and I absolutely didn't shoehorn the scene in in hopes of have a Bechdal scene or something. The only reason it's there is because it actually matters with the plot and character development; in this case, the MC was stupid and didn't recognize that one of the women was struggling with issues similar to his own, even though the signs were there.

The only other way I can think of having a f/f scene in a male first book is with some sort of storytelling or flashback. Essentially, another character would relate what happened at the f/f encounter to the male. Again though, if this was something shoehorned in, I think it would be obvious to the reader in many cases. I mean, imagine if every male first book from now on included one of the two above from now on? It would quickly become a trope and readers would roll there eyes when they saw the signs such a scene was starting. "Oh great, here comes the Bechdal scene."

The point of the test is just that we need fleshed out, independent thinking women in our entertainment. So have that.

Both my current WIPs have first person male narrators. They both pass the test. Not all interaction in any story has to be with the main character directly. The MC can be present while a conversation is taking place or can hear about a conversation that's taken place somewhere else.

The Bechdel test is a simplistic way of testing whether you have well-written female characters - in particular characaters that are fully developed in their own right and aren't just someone's wife/mother/eye candy/etc. A book can have well-written female characters and not pass the test if they don't ever get to talk to each other. Or there can be perfectly good reasons why there aren't many female characters. As long as it's well thought out and not a case of making the characters all male because it never occurred to the writer that women can actually do stuff and be anything other than someone's wife/mother/etc.

Usually, if you have well-written female characters, then there's inevitably going to be times when two of your well-written female characters talk to each other about something. And it's not going to be talking about a man, because they've got plenty of other things to talk about, like plot related stuff.

Example from my books set 40,000 years ago: the women of my MC's tribe are knowledgeable about herbal medicine/healing, when and where to gather food, know a ton about all the plants in the region and also all about children and babies (including midwifery) and are accomplished at making/using various technologies of their time. As a result, women talk to women about all these topics and many others and men ask women's advice and female elders are involved in decision making along with male elders. (All of this is similar to how the social dynamics are in many modern hunter-gatherer tribes.) So there's lots of opportunities for women to talk to each other about something that's not a man. If someone was stuck in a male dominated mindset, they might only develop the male/hunter side of the tribe's culture and only have men doing interesting things, only men involved in decision making, with women in the background and only appearing as someone's female partner or mother, not contributing anything useful, etc, so if they do say anything at all, it's about a man. It's this difference in mindset that's important.

I think a writer trying to force in a scene where a woman speaks to a woman about something that's not a man would be missing the point - if you have some well-written, properly developed female characters, it's going to happen without you trying, or if it doesn't, it won't matter because the point is having well-written properly developed female characters in the first place.

neandermagnon said:

I think a writer trying to force in a scene where a woman speaks to a woman about something that's not a man would be missing the point - if you have some well-written, properly developed female characters, it's going to happen without you trying, or if it doesn't, it won't matter because the point is having well-written properly developed female characters in the first place.

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My first (non-Bechdel-passing) book has a murder mystery subplot, and the murder victim is a man. So when two women talk, they're often discussing a man because they're discussing the murder.

As a coarse test, Bechdel is a good place to start, but it lacks nuance.

lizmonster said:

As a coarse test, Bechdel is a good place to start, but it lacks nuance.

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Well said.

Are there other related tests for gender balance in books? I'm just curious; I'm not sure they or any test is all that useful. To quote neandermagnon "the point is having well-written properly developed female characters in the first place." If in some scenes two or more women want to talk about men that would just be part of the story.

In my case all of my heroes are women. I'm not sure why, but I find men-only or men-mostly stories boring. Maybe it's just because I know or have known so many interesting women that I want to spend much of my writing time among such.

Laer Carroll said:

Are there other related tests for gender balance in books?

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I actually think this one is pretty useful. It seems absurd on the surface, but I've certainly seen movies that don't pass.

I'd never heard of either the Bechdel test or the Sexy Lamp Shade test before now. Thanks for the links

Alison Bechdel asks you call it the Bechdel-Wallace Test.

I feel a little bit sheepish about the whole thing, because it’s not like I invented this test or said this is the Bechdel test. It somehow has gotten attributed to me over the years.

It’s this weird thing. Like, people actually use it to analyze films to see whether or not they pass that test.

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I'm fond of the Mako Mori test myself.

[The work has](i) at least one female character (ii) who has her own narrative arc (iii) which does not exist to support the narrative arc of a male character

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Maggie Maxwell said:

I'm fond of the Mako Mori test myself.

[The work has](i) at least one female character (ii) who has her own narrative arc (iii) which does not exist to support the narrative arc of a male character

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Nice! That one my WIP passes. Having a first person narrative from a male perspective that focuses on a tight nit group of friends, without a great deal of interference from outside characters, made the Bechdel test a no-go.

I never even thought about it until now, but my WIP actually fails the gender-reversed Bechdel Test.

I'm with the OP that I always sweat these because I write predominantly in 1st person. If the MC is female, it's off to the races, if male I find myself worrying excessively (while trying to keep in mind it's a tool for self-examination more than anything).

I don't find the Bechdel test to be a good metric of the quality/presence of female characters in a story. As already pointed out, there are plenty of circumstances which justify a story where female characters don't communicate with each other. And by definition, you could put in a one-sentence-each conversation between two women that goes off of sexist cliches (say, women gushing about shoes) and that would fulfill the Bechdel Test.

One of my WIPs does not have a single scene in which two male characters have a conversation that isn't about a female character. I don't think that makes those male characters under-developed, and I don't think anyone would interpret this as meaning those male characters are "just someone's husband/father/eye candy etc.". Most of the major characters are female, but there still is a male character with a significant role in the story. Whom he talks to about what doesn't change his importance, and I wouldn't think any differently if all of the characters were gender-swapped.

Lakey said:

Only in the most superficial and mechanical way. The test (like all the tests mentioned in this thread) is not meant to be a binary pass/fail marker of fully-dimensioned, agentive representation of women, a test that can be applied mechanically without the intervention of thought. To the contrary - it is meant to be a prompt for thought. If one's story "fails" the test, one might do well to examine the story and see whether there are sound, story-related reasons why women are underrepresented in it. Failing the test doesn't mean you have to apply a band-aid (or even a major restructure) to "fix" it. It's just one point to consider in structuring your story and its characters.

It's also useful as an aggregate, applied to a corpus, where it has statistical value (see some recent studies applying it to Best Picture nominees or top box-office drawers of the past couple of decades). It tells you something broadly about the kind of stories that have historically been favored by the various industries that determine what kinds of stories get told in popular media.

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Wouldn't the validity of such a test be directly related to the type and way the story is being told?

I just finished Pressfield's 'The Virtues of War', about the exploits of Alexander the Great. This incredible story would fail the test.
Steven King's IT would probably fail as well.
If you swap the polarity, how much of women's fiction / romance would pass (having two men speaking off line about something other than women).

My novels are all written from the POV of a single male character, so if something happens when he's not around, he doesn't know about it - so my works would fail this test. Actually, I'm proud of my female characters - there isn't a shrinking violet / fashionista / girly-girl among them. They're tough, decisive, smart, and brave - and often greater than equal to the MC and other males. They are that way because all of them are modeled after women I've known.

So, I'm questioning the value / need for such a test.

indianroads said:

Wouldn't the validity of such a test be directly related to the type and way the story is being told?

I just finished Pressfield's 'Virture of War', about the exploits of Alexander the Great. This incredible story would fail the test.
Steven King's IT would probably fail as well.
If you swap the polarity, how much of women's fiction / romance would pass (having two men speaking off line about something other than women).

My novels are all written from the POV of a single male character, so if something happens when he's not around, he doesn't know about it - so my works would fail this test. Actually, I'm proud of my female characters - there isn't a shrinking violate / fashionista / girly-girl among them. They're tough, decisive, smart, and brave - and often greater than equal to the MC and other males. They are that way because all of them are modeled after women I've known.

So, I'm questioning the value / need for such a test.

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The test is intended as an aggregate measure of how women are represented in creative work. In most literary genres, women are underrepresented, and when they are represented, they often exist solely to motivate the male characters. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with any specific story as told, but when viewed as a trend, it says a lot about how we view and perpetuate cultural stereotypes (like, for example, the idea that shy women, fashion-conscious women, and "girly-girls" can't be strong, unique, and have agency).

It's also worth noting that although these tests focus on binary gender, women aren't the only historically underrepresented/badly-represented demographic out there. I do think it doesn't hurt us, as writers, to continually examine what we're writing about and why/how we cast our stories. (I don't often change my mind, but I find it kind of fascinating to look at my own motivations and biases.)

Also have to say, as someone who devoured and enjoyed the book, that IT probably isn't the shining example of non-offensive Bechdel-failing literature you want to rally behind.

indianroads said:

So, I'm questioning the value / need for such a test.

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Simply because you don't understand what it is and what it is for. It's about examining gender representation in broad swath's of fiction, with the original comic strip in the 80s having two characters trying, and failing, to find a movie to see that just has to pass the simple criteria-

1:The movie has to have at least two women in it,
2: who talk to each other,
3: about something besides a man

- and it took off as people started applying to comics, fiction, tv and seeing just how badly _everything_ was failing it.


It's already been explained how it doesn't really work as something you apply to one specific piece, nor does the pass/fail make any sort of declarative statement about a singular work. It isn't some rigorous scientific examination that gives you a precise readout like you were testing for pH. Whether any singular work passes or fails is pretty irrelevant (with exceptions of course - if you wrote a full length novel with multiple female primary characters, and it failed to meet the low bar of "features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man" it might be a good idea to ask yourself 'why is that?'

Where it is useful is looking at groupings of things - John Carpenter's It fails the test hard, but one example is indicative of nothing, for many reasons described earlier. If ALL of John Carpenter's movies (there's what, 40-50 of them?) fail them, despite multiple prominent examples of female primary characters, it's useful to look at them and ask 'why?' Or for a a completely made up example - Between Marvel and DC, you have 25 movies over ten years, with multiple examples of primary female characters, why do NONE of them pass the Bechdel test?

indianroads said:

I just finished Pressfield's 'The Virtues of War', about the exploits of Alexander the Great. This incredible story would fail the test.

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So someone wrote a book about Alexander the Great and didn't have any scenes with Roxana and Stateira plotting against each other? And whatsherface Darius's mother getting into the mix? Heck, a Roxana/Darius's mother scene would be awesome, kind of like a role-reversed Cersei vs. Margaery. And that doesn't even get into the shenanigans Olympia was up to back home, and I want to say either Cassander or Lysimachus had a wife who was a major player in the Diadochi Wars, too.

I guess what I'm saying is that Pressfield failed more than the Bechdel Test, IMO.

indianroads said:

Wouldn't the validity of such a test be directly related to the type and way the story is being told?

I just finished Pressfield's 'The Virtues of War', about the exploits of Alexander the Great. This incredible story would fail the test.
Steven King's IT would probably fail as well.
If you swap the polarity, how much of women's fiction / romance would pass (having two men speaking off line about something other than women).

My novels are all written from the POV of a single male character, so if something happens when he's not around, he doesn't know about it - so my works would fail this test. Actually, I'm proud of my female characters - there isn't a shrinking violet / fashionista / girly-girl among them. They're tough, decisive, smart, and brave - and often greater than equal to the MC and other males. They are that way because all of them are modeled after women I've known.

So, I'm questioning the value / need for such a test.

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*Cough cough*

I'm no hard-core feminist, but to be perfectly clear, a woman can be somewhat timid, can like fashion, can be a girly-girl, and can still be a strong person. Not-feminine=/=strong (ie, to be strong one doesn't have to lack typically feminine qualities). Heck, how about this? A woman can be not-very-strong and still be a realistic, well-rounded character. Give her an internal life and motivations and complexity, and her bad decisions or fearfulness or failures will make her more, not less, human.

I do think you were going for something more positive in your statement, but it did come off a bit wrong, I think.

All that said, the Bechtel test is not the sole or maybe even the best litmus test of whether a work "passes muster" as being, I dunno, feminist enough. As others have said, there are reasons particular stories might not include many women or why they may be speaking about men. I mean, technically, when the two sisters in my one WIP are speaking, it's usually about men, but it's about what to do about the son/nephew who goes missing and the wounded soldier on their doorstep (he's a Yankee, they're Rebels).

While we are engaging in thought experiments, I always wonder when someone says they've written all these badass, strong, "even better than the mens!" women characters, why are those women never the protagonist?

Why does she always have to play second fiddle to a less competent man? (Kind of like in real life?)

PyriteFool said:

While we are engaging in thought experiments, I always wonder when someone says they've written all these badass, strong, "even better than the mens!" women characters, why are those women never the protagonist?

Why does she always have to play second fiddle to a less competent man? (Kind of like in real life?)

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The stereotypical "strong female character" would probably be a very dull protagonist. A "less competent" protagonist would have flaws, and those create tension and sympathy for the protagonist.

You could say the stereotypical "strong female character" is an overcompensation for other stories where female characters have little agency/are "damsels in distress", but I'm of the opinion that both extremes are rather shallow writing.

PyriteFool said:

While we are engaging in thought experiments, I always wonder when someone says they've written all these badass, strong, "even better than the mens!" women characters, why are those women never the protagonist?

Why does she always have to play second fiddle to a less competent man? (Kind of like in real life?)

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My MC's are male because that's what I choose to write - these are my novels after all. The women in my stories are modeled after women I've known.

*Cough cough*

I'm no hard-core feminist, but to be perfectly clear, a woman can be somewhat timid, can like fashion, can be a girly-girl, and can still be a strong person. Not-feminine=/=strong (ie, to be strong one doesn't have to lack typically feminine qualities). Heck, how about this? A woman can be not-very-strong and still be a realistic, well-rounded character. Give her an internal life and motivations and complexity, and her bad decisions or fearfulness or failures will make her more, not less, human.

I do think you were going for something more positive in your statement, but it did come off a bit wrong, I think.

All that said, the Bechtel test is not the sole or maybe even the best litmus test of whether a work "passes muster" as being, I dunno, feminist enough. As others have said, there are reasons particular stories might not include many women or why they may be speaking about men. I mean, technically, when the two sisters in my one WIP are speaking, it's usually about men, but it's about what to do about the son/nephew who goes missing and the wounded soldier on their doorstep (he's a Yankee, they're Rebels).

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Again - my stories, my characters.

Perhaps we should discuss how you portray men? Do you have them together talking about something other than women, cars, and sports?