The 1/4 Rule

I find the 1/4 rule facinating.

According to my social psychology Ph.D. candidate roommate, people believe that women make up 1/2 of any group when only about 1/4 of the group is populated by women. My roomie and I tested this theory on various movies and television shows. The "token" female anchor or female character generally shows up in groups of four on shows that purport to be paying attention to that sort of thing (we found that those shows that *we* considered to hold an equal ratio of male/female actually abided by the 1/4 rule as well). The one show that seemed to us to feel full of women ("Buffy" of course) was actually about 1.6:1 for main characters and actually male-dominated when baddies were included in the mix (not counting season 7, unless all the ubervamps are male). I think the ratio of main characters likely fluctuated between 1:1 and 1.6:1 throughout the run of the show as characters died off, ran away, or were replaced.

Main title characters, through show's entire run:

Buffy Summers------------Rupert Giles
Willow Rosenberg---------Xander Harris
Cordelia Chase-----------Spike
Anya---------------------Angel
Dawn Summers-------------Daniel 'Oz' Osborne
Tara Maclay--------------Riley Finn
Joyce Summers

When women make up 1/3 of any given group, men (and women) generally believe that there are "a lot" of women in the room, and believe women outnumber men (as soon as I find this study, or a mention of it, I'll post it here...). This gels with the African National Congress's law reserving 1/3 of its parliment seats for women -- women campaigned for 1/2 of the seats (women make up over half the population, after all -- shouldn't women have representatives filling just over half the seats?). Eventually, a comprise of 1/3 was reached. Look at any government body in the world, and I think you'll find that 1/3 of said body being populated by women "seems like a lot." Because, well, what are we comparing it to? In the US Senate, women hold a miserable 14% of the seats. And let's not even try and break that down into women of color -- it'll get more depressing.

However, the real reason I was reminded of this factoid was because a Clarion compatriot of mine forwarded me this picture. And I then discovered the list of final nominees for the Campbell award:

2004 Finalists

Max Barry, Jennifer Government
Philip Baruth, The X President
Greg Bear, Darwin's Children
Greg Brotherton, Star Dragon
Michael Flynn, The Wreck of the River of Stars
Kay Kenyon, The Braided World
James Lovegrove, Untied Kingdom
Jack McDevitt, Omega
Syne Mitchell, The Changeling Plague
Linda Nagata, Memory
Robert Reed, Sister Alice
Justina Robson, Natural History
Sheri S. Tepper, The Companions
Amy Thomson, Storyteller
John Varley, Red Thunder

Going purely by the "gendering" of each name, that looks like about 15 nominees, 6 of them women, which sounds really good (yet... still about 1/3), until you look at 2003 (1/5 of nominees are women), and the actual winners -- 1 winner, two runners-up - Justina Robson was the only woman to place. That's about 1/3

Looks about equal to me...