Naruto is extremely sexist.
First there’s the fact that to pretty much every team (with very few exceptions) there is two boys to every girl.There is one female hokage to now seven male hokages. Seems to be one female mizukage to six male and one female tsuchikage to three male. In Akatsuki, there is one female (even back when we see Akatsuki at its beginning is there only one female) to ten males. Taka has one female to three males. Pain’s paths also only include one woman. Out of nine jinchurikis, two are female. Out of the sannin, there is only one female to two male. In the entire Uchiha clan we only see one female.
So now we’ve established how ridiculously male-dominated the Naruto world is. What about the main female characters?
First of is Sakura. She’s the first female character properly introduced and I daresay she’s one of the characters who’s got the most development.
At the beginning, she is shown as inferior to her teammates but her itelligence is praised. She’s said to have an affinity for genjutsu (which we never get to see developed), she’s one of the only students who don’t have to cheat during the chunin exams.
One thing she gets equally with her teammates is the opportunity to train with a legendary sannin. The sannin in question is stated to be the weakest and unfortunately she is also the woman of the group. Nevertheless, Sakura becomes a highly skilled medical ninja, said to be one of the greatest alive, far surpassing Tsunade, her mentor. She never gets over her crush on Sasuke though, no matter what abuse her throws at her. In the epilogue she ends up marrying a man who’s tried to kill her several times.
Ino is introduced as Sakura’s rival in love. In the databooks we see that Ino have the highest score of her class (even surpassing Sasuke). Unfortunately, this is never stated in the series. Unlike Sakura, Ino seems to take charge of her team and is an unofficial leader. She also chooses to study medical jutsu later on. We don’t see much of Ino’s development. When her team has an arc focused on them, Shikamaru is the main character. There are lots of jokes cracked at Ino’s expense and she later marries Sai, who when they first met called her “homely”.
Then there’s Hinata. She is a very special case as she is given screentime focused exclusively on her clan and her role. Born as the heiress of the Hyuga clan, she is rejected by her father because she’s too weak (surprisingly, she is not rejected in favour of a man. Instead her little sister would be the heiress). Her infatuation with Naruto is introduced as her seeing herself in him, and honestly, that is quite believable for a thirteen year old girl. At first, this infatuation also does genuinely good. Hinata is able to overcome her personal troubles and though she loses her fight (of course) she has won in a personal sense. Unfortunately it only goes downhill from that. Hinata’s character is flanderized into her being obsessed with Naruto. Sometimes this works plotwise (as she gave him the inspiration necessary to beat Pain), but it remains obvious that Hinata’s character has been reduced to not only a lovesick girl, but a plot device.
Tenten is as far as I know the only main student from Naruto’s generation never to be given a last name. Her only appearances seem to involve throwing weapons and then get beaten. In her team’s arc, Rock Lee gets the focus. Tenten is said to idolize Tsunade and dreams of becoming hokage. At the end of the series, she’s opened up an unsuccessful weapons shop.
Those are the main female students. Let’s move on.
Out of these four teams, only one has a female leader.
Kurenai is introduced right when she’s become a jonin. She’s a genjutsu master but other than that we don’t get to know much about her. She took pity on Hinata when she was pretty much disowned and developed a sisterlike relationship with her. Kurenai’s only main fight is with Itachi Uchiha, who just so happens to be a genjutsu master as well. Kurenai is beaten and we don’t see her until it’s time for Shikamaru’s arc.
There, we find out that she’s Asuma’s lover and pregnant with his child. She disappears again and appears at the end with her now adult daughter. We see no signs of her still being a ninja and going by the ways of Naruto it’s safe to assume she became a housewife as well.
In the Uchiha clan, the only female we see is Mikoto, Sasuke and Itachi’s mother. She’s said in the databook to have been a jonin but we only ever see her as a housewife. And then she gets killed.
Akatsuki has from the beginning only had one female member. Konan is the last member to be revealed by name and she gets a fight with Jiraiya (her former teacher) who quickly immobilizes her.
Now, Konan’s character is very disturbing to me, especially since I love her. She’s introduced on the exact same level as Yahiko and Nagato, her teammates. They are orphans all three. They have all suffered equally under the war. Jiraiya finds them and takes it upon himself to train them. It’s shown that he treats them pretty equally (but Nagato is his favourite). Despite that, Konan devotes her entire life to these two men in her life and after Yahiko’s death she pretty much becomes Nagato’s shadow. It’s especially disturbing considering she’s shown in her main fight (which she lost) to be perhaps the strongest female character in the series.
Tsunade is introduced as Jiraiya and Orochimaru’s former teammate. As a legendary sannin, she is exceptionally skilled with taijutsu and medical jutsu.
When we first see her, she is a cynical, bitter drunk. During her character arc, we find out she had a little brother and a lover (who wanted to be hokage) who both died which caused her to pretty much give up on life. After she meets Naruto, he eventually wins her over and now Tsunade has a new male character to place her hope upon.
Tsunade becomes the first female hokage and seems to be doing a pretty good job. For some reason she leaves the position at around age sixty (pretty irrelevant since her abilities make her pretty much immortal). Age isn’t a matter anyways, considering how old the third hokage got. But of course Tsunade abdicates in order to let Kakashi be hokage (for all of five minutes off screen) and later Naruto. In her “dream”, she is shown accompanying her lover Dan, who’s Hokage.
Mei Terumi is introduced at age thirty when she only just became mizukage (as opposed to Tsunade who was fifty). Being an extremely powerful woman, she gets her moment to shine against Sasuke and she loses. Mei’s main woe seems to be how she can’t find love and when she abdicates (at age forty for seemingly no good reason) her only line in the epilogue is about how she can’t find a man.
Karin is the only female on team Taka as their medic, a very skilled one as well. Her personality seems to be rather abhorrent (and once, her ploy to basically rape Sasuke is played for laughs). However, she is revealed to be a distant relative of Naruto (a plot point which is never respolved) and we get an opportunity to see her vulnerable side when Sasuke tries to kill her after she saved his life. She disappears at the end and we still don’t know what happened to her.
Admittedly we don’t knw too much about Naruto’s mother Kushina, more than her fate of being the jinchuriki before him. We see her as a headstrong woman, who as a child wanted to be hokage. She got kidnapped and was saved by Naruto’s father Minato, who later became hokage while Kushina cheered him on. She dies with Minato after giving birth to Naruto.
Temari is Gaara’s older sister and she is introduced as perhaps the strongest female student of her generation. Her first (offscreen) fight is with Tenten and Temari wins. She loses to Shikamaru later, though. Not much more is said about Temari and she ends up marrying Shikamaru.
There are lots more, but I think this is good enough. There is a jarring theme in Naruto which seems to be that it’s okay for the women to dream big, as long as they’re content watching as their male lovers get to realize their dreams instead. Tenten is the only female shown actually having a job in the epilogue, an unsuccessful one at that. There is Kurenai’s daughter too, but we get to know absolutely nothing about her.
There is not a single woman in the series who gets to be inspired by their own worth. Sakura fights to catch up with Sasuke and Naruto. Hinata fights to catch up with Naruto. Karin fights to be with Sasuke, it goes on.
Kishimoto’s treatment of Sakura in the last chapter speaks volumes. It doesn’t matter what you do in the world of Naruto, if you’re a woman you better be content getting overshadowed by the men around you regardless of your own accomplishments.
She could have been working in a hospital, accompanied Naruto to the hokage meeting (I would have preferred the series ended with Naruto and Sasuke killing each other and Sakura becoming hokage). Instead, we get her cleaning her home.
**** you, Kishimoto.
