Is There a Gender Imbalance In Equestria?

[Rainy Daze 1,701]

In essence: are there more girl ponies than boy ponies? 

I feel like the show almost made a point early on to show that there were definitely male ponies, with the two pegasi who take Twilight to Ponyville and Big Mac being the most obvious examples. Still I think we almost certainly see more gals than guys over the course of the show, in fact I'd be interested to know the exact ratio.

It raises some fun questions about gender roles and such in Equestria; even just now it's made me realise they never really did a 'boys are better than girls' plot with the CMCs or something. Which I would consider a very common premise for shows like FiM.

Thoughts?

 

[Gaines 1,217]

I think there's just as much mares as there is stallions. It's because when most characters are female, I just remember the Royal Guard. 

(Mare guards must have been rare at this ^ time, if you count Fleur De Lis' background story) 

Spoiler

Nowadays there are more mare guards...

Spoiler

Later on guards of a different species...

 

 

[Splashee 28,560]

51 minutes ago, Rainy Day said:

in fact I'd be interested to know the exact ratio.

I would guess the ratio comes from Hasbro's sales figures

These are definitely a shortage of stallions, but I think it is only because the show was intended for girls to watch, and girls only like mares and princesses. (And now I sound all old fashion and stuff. Tell me I am wrong!)

[Ittoni 538]

I would say is 2 out of 3. More like 3 out of 4 at the beginning of the series.

[Landi 600]

There definitely was imbalance at the beginning of the show. Although, the show helped to make it a bit more balanced towards the later seasons. My guess is that Equestria is about 60% female and 40% male. But that's just a guess, I don't know the actual numbers. 

[DubWolf 17,213]

Gee it’d be great being a stallion.

[EpicEnergy 23,139]

Good question, I suppose the focus on female characters makes there seem to be a gender imbalance but I don't think there is much of a gender imbalance.

[SharpWit 2,608]

I really couldn't find much that was useful on horse sex ratios. In the wild it seems that their can be a stallion for every 5-25 mares, and domestically in the US, breeding males will be paired with 40-60 mares, though there is an instance of 200 and they have the ability to breed with over a thousand. There doesn't seem to be any real concrete numbers for this sort of thing, but I'm onboard with it being relatively equal within the show and we just haven't seen it because of its focus.

[Vefka 1,499]

They just wanted to make the show more appealing to girls and made majority of characters females! Look what you've done, Hasbro, now ponies have population crisis

Headcanon in 6+ show is now the thing you should take seriously, but it feels and seems like at least 70% of characters are females

[TheCuteChangeling 36]

Originally MlpFim was aimed towards younger female audinces which doesn't mean there's not very many stallions just means that we don't see them a lot, and don't forget all the creatures that are male so it pretty much balances out

[CameoShadowness 251]

Given how many stallions are guards, I don't think there is an actual imbalance at all. We just don't see them because who we see things from. On top of that, some background ponies have been shown to flip genders or rather look more male or female depending on how glitchy the background it.

 

Also I am so glad they never had a boys vs girls because it would make no sense. Ponies are shown not to care if you're a mare or stallion for a multitude of things. Only if you got what it takes. There are Princes, Princesses (although yeah they have more power) but a ton of both male guards (at the start) and the Wonder Bolts were always split with males and females. I don't see why they would ever be able to make that plot even work with what MLP has given us.

The only scenario where I think it MAY be able to work is if the CMC found folks with the same exact special talent and they were challenged but even then it would still make no sense and feel contrived as hell.

[ExplosionMare 18,060]

Yes, but it’s a retaliation to the whole “it’s a man’s world” thing. MLP is a girl’s cartoon so they want to make it all about females and their influence in the world.

[Rushing cash 836]

In the first few season they used the female models much more, and characters models were re-used more often, at many shots you could see a few lyras\bonbons\trixies and so on. In the later season they balanced that much better, they just started paying more attention on the background and created more unique character models.

[Fluttershyfan94 5,742]

Well you've probably heard the statement that the classroom or schools are like a microscopic representation of society. If you take a glimpse at the school the ones Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle attend you can see it clearly that there are way more girls then there are boys. Though that's Ponyville and it isn't uncommon for small town schools to have a lot of either boys or girls or same. So a better representation would be the school of friendship and there they are pretty much fifty/fifty so I guess we simply see it more focused on the females in Equestria.

[Happy Heart 322]

(I think the show keeps its focus on the female role, because there are definitely a lot of stallions in there. How else would there be a lot of girls...?  Huh?)

[Brony Number 42 10,057]

Maybe their biology makes for more females. That would mean some females never get a mate, or stallions get multiple mates. 

[Cagey 4,221]

From a meta standpoint, it’s a show marketed towards girls. From an in-universe standpoint? Either it’s possible our perspective is off due to the show focusing on female characters, or—

There’s this author on Fimfiction who writes about an expanded pony universe called the Triptych Continuum, and in it, they explain away the imbalance through a spell that allows mares to have children with each other. It doesn’t work for stallions because it requires a womb, and the offspring will always be female. So over time, there are more mares than stallions.

It’s a pretty solid explanation, and not one I’ve seen from anyone else. 

[Rainy Daze 1,701]

This so weird I literally just happened upon one of those stories today and started reading about that particular continuity. How serendipitous 

[Happy Heart 322]

1 hour ago, Cagey said:

There’s this author on Fimfiction who writes about an expanded pony universe called the Triptych Continuum, and in it, they explain away the imbalance through a spell that allows mares to have children with each other. It doesn’t work for stallions because it requires a womb, and the offspring will always be female. So over time, there are more mares than stallions.

(I don't find this theory to be appealing. It just sounds too weird.)

 

1 hour ago, Cagey said:

it’s possible our perspective is off due to the show focusing on female characters

(However, this is more probable. It's very likely our viewpoint of pony population is warped because of the show's focus on female roles.)

[Justin_Case001 4,876]

19 hours ago, Rainy Day said:

they never really did a 'boys are better than girls' plot with the CMCs or something

Hey, yeah, that's right!    Major props to the writers for being above that sh*t.  They knew that the right role model for kids would be to simply never address sex, thus showing by example that it should be a non-issue.

And in answer to the main question, yeah, Equestria is like 70% female.  I wish I could live there.   ...

[Splashee 28,560]

How about this? If there were more Stallions than Mares in the show/Equestria, we would have more Pegasisters than Bronies! Yes?

[Splashee 28,560]

 I wanna point out, there is a gender imbalance in this forum's selection of emojis! Go look yourself 

[Quackkyy The Pegasus 222]

I guess there are mares than stallions, but even if there wasn’t it wouldn’t really change much. Maybe the show could have benefited from one or two of the mane six being male, but it doesn’t really matter to me. I'd say it's probably about 70% mares to 30%ish stallions.

Edited September 30, 2020 by QuerkyThePegasus

[RDDash 19,151]

Um, not exactly. So many people see that a lot of girls live in the Ponyvile, so that's means then some of them go to write completely stupid fanfics where they try to justify that entire country has large population of mares based on the one town that they saw. Just look at the big picture. Where are all the guys are at? In Canterlot guard.

[Evil Pink One 13,505]

males usually protecc .... seeing that there's dragons and griffons and what nots out there..... the majority would pick guard duty... thus dwindling of survivability...

which I noticed that the majority of males in Equestria are quite young..or old... 🤔