the honor harrington series

I'm currently reading the Honor Harrington military scifi series by David Weber. I'm really enjoying it; I haven't found a brand new (to me) author that I've loved this much in a long while -- maybe 10 years! And best of all the Baen website has free downloads of some of his books (www.baen.com).

But I found myself wondering today how he balances the gender in his characters. It is set in an era where gender (for the most part) really has no bearing on a character's role or capabilities, and yet I still find myself thinking "another woman??" when the pronoun "she" is used for another captain or lieutenant being introduced. So I thought about it, and went back a few chapters and counted the male and female characters in my current book, and the numbers work out to be fairly even, give or take a few.

I was thinking of emailing the author to ask him if he has a little balance sheet or something, to keep track of how many male and female characters he has introduced, but I'm sure he gets enough email without me bugging him! But it's an interesting question, I think. I imagine that an author writing a story set in the "now" would introduce male and female characters based on his or her own experiences, and so the balance would reflect today's traditions and social "norms". But it is clear that Mr. Weber has made an effort to move beyond what are traditional male/female roles today, and so I wonder if he has to force himself to introduce more female characters than might come naturally. After all, I like to consider myself one of the more non-traditional women that I know, and yet *I* am still sometimes finding myself taken aback when a character turns out to be a woman.

Just something to ponder...