One Woman in the Justice League
Just one woman, maybe two, in a team or group of men.
Also watch Jimmy Kimmel's "Muscle Man' superhero skit - "I'm the girly one"
The Avengers:
In Marvel Comics:
"Labeled "Earth's Mightiest Heroes," the original Avengers consisted of Iron Man, Ant-Man, Hulk, Thor and the Wasp. Captain America was discovered trapped in ice in The Avengers issue #4, and joined the group after they revived him."
5 / 6 original members are male. Only one is female.
Modern films (MCU):
The original 6 Avengers were Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, and Black Widow.
Again, 5 / 6 original members are male. Only one is female.
Justice League
In DC comics:
"The Justice League originally consisted of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and Aquaman"
6 / 7 original members are male. Only one is female.
In modern films (DCEU):
The members were/are Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Cyborg. (+ introducing Martian Manhunter (in Zack Snyder's Justice League director's cut))
5 / 6 main members in both versions of the Justice League film are male, with appearances by a 7th member in the director's cut who is also male. Only one member is female.
The Umbrella Academy (comics and show)
7 members:
- Luther (Number One / Spaceboy)
- Diego (Number Two / The Kraken)
- Allison (Number Three / The Rumor)
- Klaus (Number Four / The Séance)
- Five (Number Five / The Boy)
- Ben (Number Six / The Horror)
- Vanya (Number Seven / The White Violin) Later becomes known as Viktor and nonbinary in the television adaptation after Elliot Page's transition but that's not really relevant to this.
Here, 5 / 7 original members are male. Only two are female. Only slightly better than the other more famous superhero teams, and they had to add another member (compared to Avengers' 6 members) to improve the ratio (maybe executives still demanded to have 5 males).
Now let's look at some sitcoms and other stories.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
4 males, and 1 female slightly less prominent character who is abused constantly. The show claims to be politically aware and satirical but gets away with a lot of misogynistic comedy, tbh, that I'm willing to bet a lot of people are finding funny for the wrong reasons.
Community:
Jeff, Britta, Abed, Troy, Annie, Pierce, Shirley. This one is a little better, 3/7 are female. Notice it's always more males though, they never let it become more than 50% female, or else then it's a "chick flick" or a "female team up" or "gender flipped" story. And of course the main character, and the leading few characters, are almost always male or mostly male.
Stranger Things:
Main original group of kids consisted of: Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas, and El (Eleven). 1 original female member, who is comparable to an alien and even plays the role of E.T. in direct homage. When they added Max, I saw people complaining that although they liked her, there should be only one female member. 🤦
Why is it 'iconic' to have only one female in a group of males? Does that just mean it's the tradition, the way it's always been? Can't we change that? Is it so that all the men can have a chance with the one girl, or so the males can always dominate the discussion with their use of force and manliness? Or so that whenever the team saves the day, it's mostly a bunch of men doing it, but with 'a little help' from a female/a few females (at most), too!
It's so fucked up and disgusting to me I've realised. And men don't seem to care. I'm a male and this is really disturbing to me now that I've woken up to it. How do women feel about this? Am I overreacting?
Patriarchy.
Privilege and with it an overinflated sense of entitlement, which result in the most fragile of egos (E: see downvote ration lmao).
That's at best.
At worst, and on top of the above, is conscious and deliberate misogyny and the unwillingness to give the privileges up.
This is the teeny-tiniest tip of the iceberg, but it sounds like you are willing to challenge your views and perceptions, so jump in, it (E: patriarchy, misogyny, feminism, intersectionality, and on and on..) is a terrifying, but also extremely well documented rabbit hole, just start looking..
No.
I've seen a lot of these complaints and it's never about just a woman being in media. acting as if it is, is disingenuous and plain lying
People complain when changes are made for bullshit reasons, like virtue signalling. The problem becomes that a mobile company just switches someone's race to whatever is darker, they'll switch a character from male to female, and tadaaaahhh, we have a great product now, so let's cut investments in writing, good actors, food producers and the end result it shit, yet we're supposed to somehow cheer it because the main character is now an
Take Ariel, the mermaid. The character who was known to be white with red hair was swapped to a black actress and the resulting product was shit. It ws shit not because of the character being black, but because the movie was a cheap cash grab using virtue signalling to make people care.
It can be done right when, you know, its not done for virtue signalling. Take battlestar Galactica. Starbuck was change to a woman and holy crap, did they kick it out of the park. The actress was awesome, the writing (mostly) was awesome, the production was awesome.
Too many times I've been told that some movie must be great because it's against patriarchy and its just dog shit. If you want to "battle the patriarchy" then just make a good damn movie or show, I'll watch it. I will NOT waste my time watching a shitshow just because "it has more women in it!!" I don't care, just make it good
I would add that hollywood just doesn't know how to write strong multi-women content. It seems like every show or movie that is led by a majority female cast has a bunch of one-note women doing cliche bullshit. They really struggle to write deep, nuanced, flawed women in roles where that's what the story needs. As to why, sure it's patriarchy, but they keep putting out duds and using it essentially say "audiences don't want female-led content"..
You've answered you're own question - they put it out there so they can say they tried, people didn't like it, so we'll continue as we were, with them (patriarchal entertainment execs and the patriarchal capitalists who fund them) maintaining their positions.
This answer could greatly benefit from explaining how the higher-level concepts like patriarchy and privilege apply to this scenario in particular