At some point in the past, I noticed that I had a strong tendency to make NPCs male, even though there wasn’t any good story or setting-specific reason to do so. From gods to villains to random shopkeepers - most of these were assigned male without me even realizing that I have been doing it.
Thus, I started to assign genders by the roll of a dice - and I am fairly pleased with the results as this made the world significantly more diverse.
How about you? Have you noticed any similar biases in your own NPCs - and if so, what did you do about this?
My thoughts is make the characters first there backstory and everything then roll for gender, as if I did gender first I would feel like I draw more towards stereotype of that gender. As one gender does not define who someone is. And this way they all seem more diverse and more alive that way.