I'm a newbie here, but this subject is something I've been dealing with when it comes to my stories that I work on. All my life I've gravitated to the female character, be it in movies, books and even video games (Chun Li IS my character of choice in Street Fighter). However, I've come to the opinion that well all are truely a product of our history and environment. What's helped me immensely in my recent writing is "45 Master Characters" by Victoria Lynn Schmidt. If you take what she suggest and look at the archtypes present in mankind's myths, you'll find that alot of the characters we come up with are off-shoots of these. Like what was said before about finding out the motivation behind why the character does something; fused with these archtypes, it's possible to get a better understanding of why the opposite sex might do something or might not do something.

If this has been mentioned already then please disregard, I'm at work and don't have the time to read this entire thread, sorry.

Just my 2 cents. Take it or leave it.