There’s Still a Stunning Lack of Women and Minorities on the Big Screen
The box office is booming this year, thanks in large part to the women who make up half of movie audiences. But are things getting better for women onscreen? According to a new report, female representation in movies has been severely lacking for the past eight years — and it’s not improving.
The study, “Inequality in 700 Popular Films,” was published today by the Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. It examines representation of gender, race, and sexuality in the 100 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2014, and the findings are discouraging, if not surprising. In total, women represent just 30.2 percent of all speaking characters — not lead characters, just characters who speak — in those 700 films. Of those movies, only 11 percent had gender-balanced casts, featuring women in roughly half the speaking roles. Just five of the films had more women than men onscreen.
And unfortunately, despite the popularity of female-led franchises like The Hunger Games and Divergent, the numbers have not improved over the years. In 2014, the percentage of female speaking characters in the top 100 movies dropped to just 28.1 percent — the lowest in the seven-year study. The problem extends even to animated characters; in 2014, less than a quarter of all speaking characters in the top animated movies were women. And of the 21 women featured in “lead or co-lead” roles last year, all of them were younger than 45 years old. (In contrast, several of 2014’s top movies featured lead actors 45 or older, including Russell Crowe in Noah, Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber To, and Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow.)
In terms of racial and ethnic diversity, the study’s findings are even more dire — though again, this won’t be shocking to anyone who’s been paying attention. In seven years, there has been no significant change in the percentage of non-white characters in mainstream films; according to the report, 73 percent of characters in the top films of 2014 were white, 12.5 percent were black, 5.3 percent were Asian, 4.9 percent were Latino, 2.9 percent were Middle Eastern, and less than 1 percent were American Indian, Alaskan, or Pacific Islander. Only 17 of last years’ top 100 films featured a minority lead or co-lead, and 17 featured no black speaking characters whatsoever.
However, there is one positive trend in this area: In animation, the number of minority characters represented onscreen jumped more than 25 percent in 2014. The film mostly responsible for this increase was The Book of Life, which featured a cast of Mexican characters (some of whom, it should be noted, were voiced by white actors). But even without that movie, non-white characters in animated movies like Big Hero 6 represented a significant improvement over previous years.
The study also looked at LGBT representation onscreen, and found that only 19 speaking or named characters in the top films of 2014 (out of 4,610) were identified or coded as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. No transgender characters appeared at all.
These numbers all highlight the fact that Hollywood movies are a poor reflection of their audience. For example, Latinos made up 17 percent of the movie-going population last year — yet they represent less than 5% of onscreen speaking characters. Women, who buy 50 percent of movie tickets and go to movies more frequently than men (per a 2014 MPAA study), make up less than a third of speaking characters, and are featured as leads only 20 percent of the time. The discrepancy has a lot to do with who’s making the movies; the study finds that diversity behind the camera, in terms of female and minority writers, directors, and producers, makes a huge difference in how those groups are represented in the film. But women accounted for less than 2 percent of directors in last year’s group, while fewer than 5 percent of the films had black directors, and less than 3 percent had Asian directors.
The good news is that awareness of these issues is increasing. The anonymous blog “S–t People Say to Women Directors (& Other Women in Film)” highlights the discrimination, both subtle and overt, that often prevents qualified women in Hollywood from getting work. Actor and writer Dylan Marron’s viral video series “Every Single Word Spoken by a Person of Color” is a powerful reminder of how frequently actors of color are marginalized in film. And earlier this year, the ACLU called for a government inquiry into movie and TV hiring practices, citing “overt sex stereotyping and implicit bias.”
Hopefully, the film industry is getting a wake-up call — in the form of profit margins, if nothing else. Looking at 2015’s twenty highest-grossing films thus far, half of them feature female leads or co-leads, six have female screenwriters, and two have female directors. Furious 7, which presents the most racially diverse ensemble of any 2015 tentpole, is the No. 3 film of the year. Audiences have shown that they’re eager to see themselves onscreen, and will buy tickets accordingly. Now we just have to see if Hollywood gets the message. (h/t NYT)
