imperial radch - Is everyone really female in Ancillary Justice or is the ancillary just unable to tell?

In the book Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie most characters are indicated as female with the pronouns selected. There's some discussion about the main character being able to identify the sex because a language requires gender where as the normal language does not.

So is the ancillary, Breq, just assuming everyone is female, unless there's data to say otherwise, or are most characters really just female?

Answer

It's neither. Some characters (e.g. Seivarden) are definitely male, and probably there are as many female as male Radchaai (at least I din't find any hint about a gender imbalance in the book.)

We are essentially reading a (fictional) English translation of a Radchaai book. The Radchaai language does not mark gender in any way, but in English, we do not have gender-neutral pronouns, so the (fictional) translator has to make a choice. Usually, people chose the male pronoun in this case, but Ann Leckie chose the female pronoun.

Normal Radchaai seem to be able to recognize one's gender, but Breq has trouble doing so, maybe because a ship doesn't have sexual organs, and the ship had both male and female ancillaries.

I think this quote from the book shows this well:

Since we weren't speaking Radchaai I had to take gender into account--Strigan's language required it. The society she lived in professed at the same time to believe gender was insignificant. Males and females dressed, spoke, acted indistinguishably. And yet no one I'd met had ever hesitated or guessed wrong- And they had invariably been offended when I did hesitate or guess wrong. I hadn't learned the trick of it. I'd been in Strigan's own apartment, seen her belongings, and still wasn't sure what forms to use with her now.