Bechdel

Bechdel commonly refers to Alison Bechdel, an American cartoonist and writer known for the comic series Dykes to Watch Out For and the memoir Fun Home. She is credited with creating a simple criterion for evaluating gender representation in fiction, which has become widely known as the Bechdel test. The concept first appeared in a 1985 strip and later gained broader attention, sometimes referred to as the Bechdel-Wallace test, a name that acknowledges Bechdel and her friend Liz Wallace who helped popularize the idea.

The Bechdel test asks whether a work of fiction features at least two named women who talk to each other about something other than a man. If any of these conditions are not met, the work is said to fail the test. The test is not a measure of quality or merit; a work can pass or fail for reasons unrelated to its artistic value. Nevertheless, it has become a widely cited shorthand in discussions of gender representation in film, television, literature, and other media, and has inspired diverse variants and critical analyses.

Critics note limitations of the test, including its binary nature, potential misrepresentation of complex portrayals, and the possibility of misleading conclusions about a work’s overall treatment of women. Despite these caveats, the Bechdel test remains a common starting point for conversations about how female characters are depicted in popular culture and for prompting reassessment of media representation.