Can A Woman Be A Hero?

I recently wrote about New Year’s resolutions and that Romance novels can be seen as self improvement books in story form. While writing that, I got tired or writing,”the hero or heroine” and asked myself why couldn’t I just say hero?

English speakers used to be very specific for the male or female of just about everything. But now we often lump genders together. A goose is female, a gander is male, but we make it simple and just say a goose. There are stallions and mares, but we usually just say horse. We say dog, without feeling the need to designate whether we are talking about a male or female. We say server instead of waiter or waitress, actor instead of actor or actress. Why not hero instead of hero or heroine?

A woman can be a hero in every sense of the word. The term “hero” refers to someone who displays courage, selflessness, and the ability to inspire others. History, literature, and real life are filled with examples of heroic women who have made significant impacts through their bravery, intellect, and compassion.

For example, Joan of Arc led France’s army during the Hundred Years’ War. Malala Yousafzai was an advocate for girls’ education who stood up to oppressive regimes. In everyday live, women who serve as doctors, firefighters, soldiers, teachers, or caregivers, are heroes making a difference in their communities. In fiction, characters like Wonder Woman, Mulan, or Katniss Everdeen demonstrate heroic traits.
Heroism is about the values, actions, and impact a person has on the world around them.

So why, other that my desire to type less, am I carrying on about this? The term heroine, while often used positively to refer to a female hero, can carry subtle negative implications or limitations due to its gendered nature. Creating a separate term for women (heroine) versus men (hero), implies that women should to be categorized differently, even when performing the same courageous acts as men. It suggests that heroism is the default domain of men.

A Heroine may be seen as less powerful than a hero. It evokes a traditional or romanticized idea of femininity, downplaying a woman’s strength rather than the same breadth of courage and leadership as hero, focusing more on beauty, virtue, or emotional appeal than on bold or transformative action.

I thought about using the term main character, but that wasn’t shorter to type, and a main character isn’t necessarily heroic. The bottom line here is that my books have heroes.