Even when gender is not the focus of the story, I feel that this risks “male default-ism” and sometimes erases femininity out of female protagonists. Not that women have to be feminine, but I find that fiction often defaults on that “girl boss™” trope to make women fit in the tropes of the genre they are in where male protagonists have traditionally solved all their problems with violence and kicking ass (I remember Lindsay Ellis complaining about that girl boss trope in a video essay but it’s been a while).
I guess it comes back around to what you’re saying, women in most times and places don’t have the luxury of being able to ignore their gender. In such a setting, if you make your protagonist a woman, she’s either going to have to be so much “one of the boys” that no-one acknowledges her as a woman… or the story is going to have to deal with gender in some way.
Even when gender is not the focus of the story, I feel that this risks “male default-ism” and sometimes erases femininity out of female protagonists. Not that women have to be feminine, but I find that fiction often defaults on that “girl boss™” trope to make women fit in the tropes of the genre they are in where male protagonists have traditionally solved all their problems with violence and kicking ass (I remember Lindsay Ellis complaining about that girl boss trope in a video essay but it’s been a while).
I guess it comes back around to what you’re saying, women in most times and places don’t have the luxury of being able to ignore their gender. In such a setting, if you make your protagonist a woman, she’s either going to have to be so much “one of the boys” that no-one acknowledges her as a woman… or the story is going to have to deal with gender in some way.