You don't need a sprawling, empowering backstory with "Grrl Power" (note: that's not a thing people say anymore).
Here are pretty much the only criteria needed:
- Have the star be a woman
- Have her believe in a relatively reasonable way.
That's really about it. And yes, I know you could write a 2,000 word essay picking those two points apart, but try to see the intention of those two rules. All they do is allow a little girl to watch the TV show, and go, "neat, I could be like that."
Really, that's it. You can have a world where the little girl watching TV says "Ugh, superheroes are a boy thing, only boys are superheroes" or you have a world where the little girl goes "I'm gonna be JUST LIKE SQUIRREL GIRL, she's awesome and has a pet squirrel and she beat up Dr. Doom!"
Don't overthink it. It's nice to have variety in characters and stories. You don't have to align perfectly to US Census proportions, you don't have to worry about "the dangers of tokenism" (god I hate that phrase), it's just good to mix it up.
