Originally Posted by
sam79
This is all true, and very important. One thing I would add though; many D+D worlds (even OotSverse to some extent) are loosely based on the societies of medieval Europe, and/or Tolkien's Middle-Earth. While D+D worlds are set up as gender-neutral, these fundamental resources decidedly are not. This has a significant impact on, for example, default assumptions about who has leaadership roles and positions of authority in D+Dverse societies. Certainly in my playing experience, it was lords and kings, not ladies and queens, who called the shots.
Another point, which has been mentioned above, is the gender bias in RPG players (and RPG writers). Most players and DMs are men, and therefore most PCs (and, in my experience, significant NPCs) are also male.
So according to the canon, 'D+Dverse' is a gender-blind meritocracy, and so 50% of the leaders (or wizards, or pit fighters, or master thieves, or whatever) should be men, 50% women. But the influence of the ultimate historical and literary source material, and the biases of the players/DMs/writers who create D+Dverses will naturally lead to over-representation of male characters in many cases.