Bromances, Chickflicks and the Gender Divide

There's no shortage of great screenwriters and directors -- male and female -- with original things to say about friendships and relationships. What gives me pause is reading about a Hollywood gender-divided into fraternities and sororities (i.e., recent features mapping "Apatown" versus the "Fempire" --  the writers of bromances versus the writers of chickflicks). What gives me pause is hearing Hollywood marketing mavens tell me their tracking figures show that women moviegoers will go to a bromance but men shy away from chickflicks (meaning that the bromances will get the bigger budgets and marketing pushes). What gives me pause is hearing from screenwriters that when they write a competent female character, a producer at the story meeting will suggest that she fall down in a scene so as to be less threatening to the men in the audience.

I don't know what the resolution to this problem is. But I know that making movies that appeal to, and star, those of both genders is a start. If the Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy comedy "Adam's Rib" -- the one about themarried lawyers on opposite sides of an attempted-murder case -- were made today, would it be considered a chickflick? Or would the characters be re-written so that the leads were best friends and be played by Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson?