Fictional character representations reflect social norms and biases. Women are relatively underrepresented in television and film, irrespective of genre. In addition, women are frequently stereotyped in these media. The combination of this stereotyping and the gender imbalance may have an impact on child development given the well-established connection between media and child development as well as on other aspects of society and culture. Here, we draw on a data-driven operationalization of archetypes -- archetypometrics -- to explore the characterization of canonically male and female characters. We find that canonically female characters tend towards more heroic and more adventurous archetypes than canonically male characters from an overall space of six core archetypes. At the trait level, the most heroic female characters are more masculine than other female characters. We also find that female characters tend towards the Diva and Sophisticate archetypes, whereas male characters tend toward the Brute and Outcast archetypes. Across all six archetypes, overarching patterns by gender sustain traditional stereotypes. We discuss the societal implications of skewed archetype representation by character gender.

翻译：虚构人物表征反映了社会规范与偏见。无论在何种类型中，女性在电视和电影中的代表性都相对不足。此外，女性在这些媒体中经常被刻板印象化。鉴于媒体与儿童发展之间已确立的关联，这种刻板印象与性别失衡的结合可能对儿童发展产生负面影响，同时也可能影响社会和文化的其他方面。本文采用基于数据的原型操作化方法——原型计量学——来探讨典型男性和女性角色的特征刻画。我们发现，在一个包含六个核心原型的整体空间中，典型女性角色比典型男性角色更倾向于英雄主义和冒险主义的原型。在特质层面，最具英雄气概的女性角色比其他女性角色更具男性气质。我们还发现，女性角色倾向于"名媛"和"智者"原型，而男性角色则倾向于"蛮人"和"局外人"原型。在所有六个原型中，按性别划分的总体模式维持了传统刻板印象。我们讨论了角色性别导致的原型表征偏差所蕴含的社会影响。