Bechdel-Wallace test

The Bechdel test or Bechdel/Wallace test was developed by Liz Wallace and became widely known after Alison Bechdel featured it in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For.

The Bechdel test is a test of female characterisation in movies. Passing the Bechdel test requires that:

1. the movie [media] has at least two women characters;
2. who talk to each other;
3. about something other than a man.

Passing or failing the test is not an ironclad guarantee of well-rounded, feminist, characterisation but it is indicative of the problems of token women characters. A vast amount of geeky media fails the test.

Applications

The test has been applied to various media:

• TVTropes has a list of passing media of different forms on their wiki.
• tigtog applied it to a list of the “Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years”, with few books meeting the full criteria at Larvatus Prodeo

Variants

• TV Tropes has the Deggans Rule
• Latoya Peterson has some drafts of a race version of the Bechdel test: racialicious.com
• Alaya Dawn Johnson posted the literal race version of the test and applied it to science fiction at The Angry Black Woman
• Lauredhel made a variant for children's toys, regarding whether there were two girls depicted in an advertisement and whether they were playing at being stereotypical women or not at Hoyden About Town
• Randall Munroe analyzed how many popular recent films had two female leads. Fugitivus analyzed the response to his post.

External links

• DTWOF: The Blog: The Rule explaining the history of the rule and displaying the original comic.
• Dykes to Watch Out For on Wikipedia
• http://bechdeltest.com/