What is the male:female ratio of gendered minifigures?

Question

For many years now, Lego has provided more detail on the face and bodies of minifigures. One of the effects of this is that the usually visually gender-neutral minifigures of my childhood (with the rare exception of a sloped piece as a dress) have been replaced by clear male and female faces and body shapes.

But in packing away my Atlantis sets to make room for my wife's new Super Star Destroyer, I've noticed that there's only one woman. And yet, oceanography and marine biology have some of the highest ratios of female graduates and employees in scientific fields, approaching 50%.

So of all the minifigures who are gendered (either explicitly by Lego in character biographies, or via secondary sexual traits like facial hair, or via cultural traits like wearing a dress or lipstick), what's the ratio of male to female minifigures? How does it break down year-over-year, theme-by-theme, and by recommended age group?

(As you might guess, there's an ideological agenda behind this question, and yes it's inspired by the ridiculous new "Lego Friends" line of figures. But what I'm most interested in right now is hard facts.)

Answer 1

I found this interesting comment by J on a blog post about LEGO female oriented sets.

I did a count of male and female mini-figures by theme in the 2011 releases for which we have visual evidence. The modular house line always tends to be more balanced so there’s still potential there but the City theme is particularly bad this year. Here’s the results (aliens/creatures are excluded except where male-female differentiation exists:

Alien Abduction: 9 male, 1 female

Atlantis: 7 male, 1 female

Castle: 15 male, 1 female

City: 59 male, 5 female

Collectible Mini-Figures: 37 male, 10 female (omit 1 alien)

Creator: 2 male, 0 female

Dacta: 33 male, 19 female Duplo: 16 male, 4 female

Harry Potter: 20 male, 3 female

Ninjago: 30 male, 3 female

Pharaoh’s Quest: 9 male, 1 female

Pirates of the Caribbean: 32 male, 4 female

Star Wars: 43 male, 7 female

Trains: 3 male, 0 female

TOTAL SYSTEM: 299 male, 55 female

TOTAL DUPLO: 16 male, 4 female

TOTAL: 315 male, 59 female

That’s greater than a 5:1 ratio and if you remove the Dacta and Collectible Mini-figure sets from the equation, you get a pathetic 8:1 ratio (245 male, 30 female). I’ll say it again. If Lego wants girls to take interest in their products, they should make a better effort to include figures through which girls can identify.

The survey only takes into account 374 minifigures of the last year. It would be interesting to compare this data to minifigures released, 10, 20 and 30 years back to see how the gender ratio has changed.

Answer 2

My guess would be that only LEGO has the answer, and I'm sure they'd never tell. But for what it's worth, looking at the BrickLink.com stock, I came up with a ratio of 4:2:1 for male:neutral:female heads.

I looked at heads because I feel like many figs aren't so cut-and-dried with respect to gender (or could be considered both/either), while it's pretty clear with heads where you stand. This doesn't take into account multiple copies of the same fig in sets, but it does take into account older minifig designs, which had a tendency to be less gender specific.

Anyway, in case anyone's interested, here's a post with more details on my findings, including my sources and methods, as well as further musings on the gender-LEGO issue: