| abstract
| - Bob, Jen and Griff are wandering through the woods in their quest to defeat Monster X and recover the MacGuffin of the week. All have great weapons, are hailed as seasoned combatants and are generally viewed as heroes. It looks like we may have a fantastic fight on our hands. The fight begins as soon as our heroes reach the cave, but Monster X is so tough that he trounces Bob and Griff without breaking a sweat. Clearly, we're in trouble. Only Jen can save the City of Adventure from the monster, and she proceeds to do so with a new technique she learned in record time. Of course, we don't think anything of it at first. Jen was lucky to have that new technique, even though the boys each have cool techniques as well. There's nothing suspicious about one lucky victory. Then, the next time the group enters a battle, they fight an even bigger monster from dimension Z alongside another group consisting of Mary, Lee and Amy. When the dust clears, Mary, Amy and Jen are the only ones standing. Noticing something here? There wasn't any reason for Bob, Griff and Lee to fail. Their Power Levels are the same as the girls; maybe even greater, but for some reason, they just can't seem to measure up when the chips are down. Whether he knows it or not, Bob and his pals have just been bitten by the Gender Incompetence bug; the tendency of one gender in a story/movie/show/game/etc to fail when the going gets tough even though there isn't much reason for it. It wasn't that only one gender could master the Dangerous Forbidden Technique. It wasn't that all the awesome superpowers belonged to the gender that saved the day. Just, for some reason, one sex seems to come out on top all the time. This can take a few forms.
* Fortune Favors One Sex.: In this instance, one gender loses all the time, just by really bad luck.
* Dumb Blond Gender.: Here, an entire gender is treated as being as dumb as a collection of granite chunks, causing them to screw up all the time through sheer lack of intelligence.
* Gender Baggage.: This is for when all members of a gender are treated as being overly emotional, or conversely, too logical, causing them to fail when greater strength/compassion is needed.
* Customary Incompetence.: For instances where the failure of one gender is due to the way they're treated by members of the other gender. For instance, male characters encouraging equally-capable female ones to stand back and let them handle it, so that the males don't have to protect them. The females may go along with the plan because it's expected, reducing their effectiveness regardless of any spells/techniques/special training they may otherwise have. Depending on how far towards its extreme this is taken, this one has been Truth in Television in many periods of history. In all cases, one gender is made effectively useless throughout the course of the fiction, while the other is not. Could be considered a Sub Trope of Double Standard. Compare to Gender Restricted Ability, Faux Action Girl and Women Are Wiser. Contrast with Positive Discrimination. Note: If one gender has all the superpowers, skills, weapons and/or magic, and those powers cause them to succeed, this trope does not apply. This is only for instances where the reason behind the failure of one gender and the success of the other is due to something other than a physical, tactical disadvantage. Examples of Gender Incompetence include:
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