History Main / GenderIncompetence

** Series that have an UnwantedHarem component (Such as ''RosarioToVampire'') also avert this, since it'd be bad both if the guy was useless (Misandry, and why would the girls like him if he's TheLoad?) and the only useful one (Misogyny, [[TheDulcineaEffect and he'd have less reason to care, too.]]).

** ''SoulEater'' being a possible exception in this respect. Even ignoring the Action Girl Heroine, it's harder to name a female character in the cast - main or otherwise - who ''isn't'' either an Action Girl or in some other way competent.

* The anime OVA of ''Anime/ReadOrDie'' was very good about the balance between gender effectiveness, but not as much with the TV series, even though the vast majority of the series' main characters were female. During the final chapters of the series, they seemed to do a lot of losing, crying and getting captured, despite the fact that they are physically capable of killing the bad guy at any time with their awesome superpowers.

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
* In ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'', it seems to be something of a theme to have an all-female society with strange and terrible powers suddenly have to deal with a man with those exact same powers, only several jillion times stronger. According to certain throwaway lines regarding Norma Cenva in ''Literature/GodEmperorOfDune'', there have been genderswapped variants of this in the past as well.
** It's stated that the limit of the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers was that their training to particularly feminine/maternal instincts meant that they couldn't access their male ancestry in their Other Memory. The Kwisatz Haderach was intended to overcome this weakness (as well as having other capabilities), which would require a male trained in Bene Gesserit ways. Note the fact that the Gesserit ''wanted'' to have a Kwisatz Haderach, but he ended up coming a generation too early for their plans.
*** Then again, men didn't become Bene Gesserit because they kept failing the final test which killed them. Apparently, the depths of the male psyche is just that scary.
* ''TheWheelOfTime'' series has this. Men are widely regarded as weak, mainly because they can't really work together in channeling, and most of those that can channel get sealed up pretty quick.
** On the other hand, most of the male characters are portrayed as fairly sensible, while the women are typically sniffing, arm-crossing {{Tsundere}} who won't listen to reason. Men as a group become more and more powerful over the course of the series, while the women become less powerful (and often less competent), and even supposedly powerful and capable female characters end up in distress a lot.

[[AC: {{Advertising}}]]

[[AC: {{Anime}}]]

* ''LightNovel/BakaToTestToShoukanjuu'' is made of this. Almost every male character (Except teachers) is dumb or suffers from TheWorfEffect. Some TakeALevelInBadass to compensate, but even then they're still mostly {{Butt Monkey}}s. Women tend to be super-smart and have DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale at full strength, and the only one without good scores has a good excuse (She studied abroad and doesn't know kanji).

* ''TsubasaReservoirChronicle'': Anime only, Customary variety. Sakura never really manages to become an ActionGirl, instead having the party do all the fighting while she is reserved for situations needing a MacGuffin solution. The other women in the anime are also basically told to StayInTheKitchen.

[[AC: VideoGames]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Final Fantasy IV}}'', early on in the game, features a battle to try to protect a castle that focuses on fighting hordes of bad guys, which wouldn't be so hard except that just before the battle, you're robbed of all your most powerful spellcasters, seemingly just because they're women. The rest of the game isn't bad at recovering from this, however.

[[AC: WesternAnimation]]

[[AC: {{Literature}}]]
* In Franchise/{{Dune}}, it seems to be something of a theme to have an all-female society with strange and terrible powers suddenly have to deal with a man with those exact same powers, only several jillion times stronger. According to certain throwaway lines regarding Norma Cenva in ''Literature/GodEmperorOfDune'', there have been genderswapped variants of this in the past as well.

*** Notably, the [[YouFailBiologyForever Simpson gene]] [[LamarckWasRight responsible for the male Simpson's stupidity]] [[CanonDisContinuity is never mentioned again]], and future episodes [[RetCon give better explanations for Homer and Bart's stupidity, like a crayon lodged in Homer's brain and a combination of ADHD, a pathological need for attention, and a generally bad experience during his first day at school for Bart]], while a woman heavily implied to be Homer's older half-sister was about Homer's intellect.

* It often seems this way in ''KimPossible'', where pretty much all male characters are either incredibly annoying, evil, useless in a fight, or some combination of the above. Slightly subverted in that many of them do get at least a few instances where they get to shine, and many of them are {{Techno Wizard}}s.

** This troper disagrees - it seems that almost every character has a low opinion of, or is simply baffled by the opposite gender. There are major imbalances of power both magically and politically, but those aren't covered in this trope.

*** Other, non-stupid male Simpsons were also introduced like Homer's half brother Herbert
** But subverted by some characters, like Amy Wong or Ned Flanders.
*** In all fairness, Amy has shown some intelligence throughout the series. Some. Very, very rarely. She is, however, competent enough by season 6 for the Professor to trust her with helping him work on and test his inventions.
*** She has also earned a doctorate and singlehandedly came up with a plan to save Earth from superintelligent cats. With science.

** ''Futurama'' plays this trope sort of straight-ish with Fry and Leela, at least in the sense that Fry is functionally retarded, while Leela could technically be considered the most responsible of the cast. As the series went on, however, it became much more obvious that Leela was just as crazy and immature as the rest of the crew. With the rest of the show's main characters, it's even less clear-cut however -- Hermes is genuinely competent, Bender is quite intelligent but totally amoral, the Professor has a brilliant mind, but one afflicted by senility and borderline insanity, Amy is a [[GeniusDitz Genius Ditz]] with heavier emphasis on [[TheDitz the ditz]], and even Zoidberg occasionally shows signs of being a good physician, mostly when he isn't working on humans.
*** While it is clear that Leela is the most competent fighter and pilot in the group (despite a tendency to crash through billboards), those are the only areas where she is particularly exceptional. She mainly comes off so well because Fry is incredibly incompetent in almost every way.
**** For example, it should be noticed that Fry is (for some reason) successful at getting women in the series, while Leela only picks losers and leads an exceedingly lonely life. There are different types of competency.
**** He's also very flexible most of the time, adapting quickly to changing conditions, cultures, etc. Most normal people would have a much harder time coping with skipping a thousand years of history even if they weren't leaving much of a life behind them.
**** Lastly, Fry has the problem [[DisabilitySuperpower of lacking a Delta Brainwave]], which is a straight inconvenience whenever the Brainspawn aren't a factor in whatever the current plot is. In spite of this, he frequently acts only about as dumb as the other characters around him.

** To be fair, there was emotional manipulation involved on the Joker's part, the kind which has one go into existential crises (and even Junior, who is a guy, goes through it and is captured). And he has henchmen briefed on the {{Paper Master}}s and their powers and are equipped accordingly (check out what Drake could do just from fighting alongside one), although the characters manage to fight them after resolving their crises. However, this would still more or less qualify as Gender Baggage, if not for the fact that Junior falls for it too, to an even greater degree.
*** On the other hand, Junior isn't the most masculine of characters.

* In most animated sitcoms, particularly ''{{Futurama}}'' and ''TheSimpsons'', the female characters are depicted as being far more competent than the male ones, to the point where male characters are rendered as bungling idiots (Fry, Bender, Homer, sometimes Bart) while female characters are rendered as innately clever, cunning, wise or even good in a fight (Marge, Lisa, Maggie, Leela.)

* ''VideoGame/{{Final Fantasy IV}}'', early on in the game, features a battle to try to protect a castle that focuses on fighting hoards and hoards of bad guys, which wouldn't be so hard except that just before the battle, you're robbed of all your most powerful spellcasters, seemingly just because they're women. The rest of the game isn't bad at recovering from this, however.
** More likely, though, that they were just moving the party members who knew white magic to the back lines in order to treat the wounded.

* In {{Dune}}, it seems to be something of a theme to have an all-female society with strange and terrible powers suddenly have to deal with a man with those exact same powers, only several jillion times stronger. According to certain throwaway lines regarding Norma Cenva in ''God-Emperor Of Dune'', there have been genderswapped variants of this in the past as well.

* ''LightNovel/BakaToTestToShoukanjuu'' is made of this. Almost every male character (Except teachers) is dumb or suffers from TheWorfEffect. Some TakeALevelInBadass to compensate, but even then they're still mostly {{Butt Monkey}}s. Women tend to be super-smart and have AbuseIsOkayWhenItIsFemaleOnMale at full strength, and the only one without good scores has a good excuse (She studied abroad and doesn't know kanji).

* Extemely common in modern advertising, usually with a stupid, immature husband married to a smart, very competent wife who of course uses the product being advertised.

** ''Futurama'' plays this trope sort of straight-ish with Fry and Leela, at least in the sense that Fry is functionally retarded, while Leela could technically be considered the most responsible of the cast. As the series went on, however, it became much more obvious that Leela was just as crazy and immature as the rest of the crew. With the rest of the show's main characters, it's even less clear-cut however -- Hermes is genuinely competent, Bender is quite intelligent but totally amoral, the Professor has a brilliant mind, but one afflicted by senility and borderline insanity, Amy is of pretty average intelligence, and even Zoidberg occasionally shows signs of being a good physician, mostly when he isn't working on humans.

* Extemely common in modern advertising, usually with a stupid, immature husband married to a smart, very competent wife who of course uses the product being advertized.

** Series that have an UnwantedHarem component (Such as ''RosarioToVampire'') also avert this, since it'd be bad both if the guy was useless (Why would the girls like him if he's TheLoad?) and the only useful one (Kinda sexist).

* The first season of the ''SuperRobotWarsOriginalGeneration'' anime was quite unfair with its female characters, most barely getting to fight or only fighting once for a plot event, then not anymore. The most {{egregious}} example might be Kusuha, who only deploys for one fight ''so she can get captured''. Thankfully the second season averts this and makes both guys and girls awesome.

* '''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, [[StrawVulcan 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, [[StayInTheKitchen 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 TruthInTelevision in many periods of history.

*** Then again, men didn't become Bene Gesserit because they kept failing the final test which killed them.

** ''Futurama'' plays this trope sort of straight-ish with Fry and leela, at least in the sense that Fry is functionally retarded, while Leela could technically be considered the most responsible of the cast. As the series went on, however, it became much more obvious that Leela was just as crazy and immature as the rest of the crew. With the rest of the show's main characters, it's even less clear-cut however -- Hermes is genuinely competent, Bender is quite intelligent but totally amoral, the Professor has a brilliant mind, but one afflicted by senility and borderline insanity, Amy is of pretty average intelligence, and even Zoidberg occasionally shows signs of being a good physician, mostly when he isn't working on humans.

* In most animated sitcoms; particularly ''{{Futurama}}'' and ''TheSimpsons'', the female characters are depicted as being far more competent than the male ones, to the point where male characters are rendered as bungling idiots (Fry, Bender, Homer, sometimes Bart) while female characters are rendered as innately clever, cunning, wise or even good in a fight (Marge, Lisa, Maggie, Leela.)

** ''Futurama'' plays this trope straight with Fry and Leela, with the former being almost functionally retarded and the latter virtually a GodModeSue (when she isn't showing signs of being a selfish jerk). With the rest of the show's main characters, it's less clear-cut however -- Hermes is genuinely competent, Bender is quite intelligent but totally amoral, the Professor has a brilliant mind, but one afflicted by senility and borderline insanity, Amy is of pretty average intelligence, and even Zoidberg occasionally shows signs of being a good physician, mostly when he isn't working on humans.

* ''{{Final Fantasy IV}}'', early on in the game, features a battle to try to protect a castle that focuses on fighting hoards and hoards of bad guys, which wouldn't be so hard except that just before the battle, you're robbed of all your most powerful spellcasters, seemingly just because they're women. The rest of the game isn't bad at recovering from this, however.

* ''BakaToTestToShoukanjuu'' is made of this. Almost every male character (Except teachers) is dumb or suffers from TheWorfEffect. Some TakeALevelInBadass to compensate, but even then they're still mostly {{Butt Monkey}}s. Women tend to be super-smart and have AbuseIsOkayWhenItIsFemaleOnMale at full strength, and the only one without good scores has a good excuse (She studied abroad and doesn't know kanji).

* The anime OVA of ''ReadOrDie'' was very good about the balance between gender effectiveness, but not as much with the TV series, even though the vast majority of the series' main characters were female. During the final chapters of the series, they seemed to do a lot of losing, crying and getting captured, despite the fact that they are physically capable of killing the bad guy at any time with their awesome superpowers.

<<|GenderAndSexualityTropes|>>