Sports
The Olympics doesn't have a special events for white runners or black swimmers, even though very few are good enough to compete at the top level, because any special consideration there would be condescending and racist. Yet we have special events for female runners and female swimmers. Even female rifle shooting is segregated.Sex-segregated sporting events are condescending and sexist and any calls to make women's sports receive identical coverage and money are more condescending and sexist still. We do not give athletes money, public attention and accolades because they try hard, we give them because they perform well. A person's gender shouldn't give them special treatment and compensation when they do not perform as well as others.
The lack of investment into female sports is a non-issue here. Female 100m sprinters are not being held back because of a lack of investment, but because of physiological differences between men and women. It is not even the case that male runners always receive more investment; eg. where a country has no male runners good enough to compete, they will invest in their female ones in order to win medals there. But they still will not be as fast as their male counterparts.
Fiction
A lot of our popular fiction features heroic archetypes. Usually male ones.While I enjoy fiction featuring female heroes, I cannot blame anyone for producing fiction with a male hero. This is simply our fiction reflecting reality.
Think about the jobs where our heroes come from: law enforcement, soldiers and so on. All high-risk and physically-demanding jobs that fewer females choose to enter in the real world too.
Real world exceptions certainly exist too, even historical ones, but we already have a far higher proportion of fictional female soldiers than real ones. Insofar as fiction serves as an inspiration to people, we already have examples. Any attempts to artificially increase this proportion, through censorship, shaming or aggressive lobbying, would be condescending and sexist. Any lobbying and shaming should be directed at changing the unequal reality, rather than the mirror which is merely reflecting it.
Artists should feel free to create whatever fiction they wish, and consumers should be free to view what they wish. While female heroes are great and will continue to be successful, the overall preponderance of male heroes is not sexist, it is simply a reflection of real life.
If more women are allowed and choose to enter high-risk and physically-demanding jobs, and live and die in heroic ways, I believe this will change. But even then, most fiction with a historical basis or fiction that relies on the hero to be extremely physically capable will have to be fantastical if it is to have a female hero. A knight in full-plate armour wielding large weapons with ease is still less fantastical as a male, purely because of historical and physiological facts.
