Is your protagonist male or female?
I wonder if most of the main characters in novels are the same sex as the author.
There are examples of famous writers have failed when they have based their novel on the opposite sex.
There are also famous authors who have intelligently avoided the pitfall of writing about the opposite sex.
‘The Professor’ by Charlotte Bronte is based upon her experiences in Brussels, where she was a teacher in 1842. Much of the same subject matter of 'The Professor' was reworked from the perspective of a female student into Brontë's later novel Villette, which attracted MUCH HIGHER critical acclaim.
Jane Austen wrote about men in situations she was most familiar with. In her personal encounters with men. In situations when both men and women were present. But she knew little of what men spoke about in the absence of women.
Austen avoided pitfalls by writing about what she knew.
In just about every story I've ever wrote I write the main character as a boy, I may be a girl but I never understood them. I understood the way boys think in a much better way to girls. I always found it much easier to write them as boys. If I ever did write a girl I would always have to get my friends to tell my how a girl thinks. Despite being one myself.
I thought I'd written with a male protagonist but had to remove his POV in the end. In the third book I return to having a male POV but retain the main female character as the lead. I think that works.
My first children's novel was a female. The second Jacob Jones. I wrote a filmscript Called 8 AM. This was based around Dr Libby foster and her colleague Melissa. Both females which I found quite easy to write for.