Gender Ratio in Shakespeare

In English today, I realised that Goneril, Regan and Cordelia are the only female characters I can think of in King Lear. Obviously they're very important in the play, but I think that's interesting in itself; it seems that when Shakespeare was making up throwaway characters, they were just automatically male.

So I wanted to test that with his other plays. I'm using this site which lists all vaguely important characters in each play, and will do a total of each tally at the end. 

All's Well That Ends Well

Female: 6
Male: 7

Antony & Cleopatra

Female: 8
Male: 26

It was hard to tell the gender of the ancient names, so I just went with my gut and said Cleopatra's attendants were female. And looked some of them up.

As You Like it

Female: 4
Male: 16
Not Clear: 1

Coriolanus

This one was difficult as there are a lot of unnamed characters. I only included the ones for which I had a number and could discern gender.

Female: 4
Male: 13

Cymbeline

Female: 3
Male: 23

Hamlet 

Female: 2
Male: 18

Henry IV (Part I)

Female: 3
Male: 18

Henry V

Female: 4
Male: 33

Henry VIII

Female: 5
Male: 32

Julius Caesar

Female: 2
Male: 31

King John

Female: 4
Male: 16

King Lear

Female: 3 (as I thought!)
Male: 17

Love's Labour's Lost

Female: 5
Male: 13

Macbeth

Female: 7
Male: 21

Measure for Measure

Female: 5
Male: 19

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Female: 4
Male: 16

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Female: 6 (chose two of the fairies for each gender)
Male: 15

Much Ado About Nothing

Female: 3
Male: 14

Othello

Female: 3
Male: 11

Pericles

Female: 5
Male: 12

Richard II

Female: 4
Male: 24

Romeo & Juliet

Female: 4
Male: 20

The Taming of the Shrew

Female: 4
Male: 17

The Tempest

Female: 4
Male: 14

Timon of Athens

Female: 2
Male: 19

Titus Andronicus

Female: 3
Male: 18

Troilus and Cressida

Female: 4
Male: 21

Twelfth Night

Female: 3
Male: 11

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Female: 3
Male: 10

The Two Noble Kinsmen

Female: 6
Male: 20

The Winter's Tale

Female: 7
Male: 13

Whew. That was a lot to go through. The totals are: *frantically adds*


Female: 130
Male: 558

Men outnumbered women on all counts, but the extent to which they did is quite surprising. The total number of characters is 688; women made up 18.9% of this total, with men making up the remaining 81.1%. 

That doesn't even account for the problem of Shakespeare automatically making disposable characters male, as most of those characters aren't counted in this tally. 

I can't believe I just sorted through 688 characters for this but there you go. Men: women in Shakespeare is roughly 19:81, or even more roughly 20:80, or 1:4. So women make up less than a fifth of his characters. While they are often formidable women, that's not great. And I noticed that the source I used often referred to the women as "wife of" "daughter of" rather than in their own right. 

So there you go. I didn't include sequels, but I think that sample size is big enough. 

Julius Caesar was the worst offender, with 15.5 times as many males as females, whereas All's Well that Ends Well was almost equal, with just one seventh in the difference.