Low ratings for female leads

Movies with female leads appear to be rated less highly by audiences than those with male leads, according to a study by two researchers who reviewed millions of online ratings of films released since the 1990s.

Those with female leads appear to be judged more harshly by viewers, according to a study published in the Strategic Management Journal, which reviewed 383 million consumer ratings on the IMDb website, covering

4 012 movies released in US theatres between 1992 and 2018.

Of these, 28% featured a woman in the lead role.

The study backed up these findings with an experiment that involved imagining fictional movie descriptions for each of the 20 genres represented in the main IMDb database.

To do this, the researchers used ChatGPT-4 to generate movie descriptions that also specified the experience level of the production team and whether the lead role would be a male or a female protagonist. These descriptions were submitted to 804 participants, who were asked to rate proposals from four different genres.

The scientists found that women’s ratings didn’t vary according to the gender of the lead actor, regardless of the production team’s level of experience.

In contrast, men’s ratings were lower for movies with a lead actress, especially when the production team was inexperienced.

However, even when the production team was experienced, male ratings remained lower.

According to the authors, this may be due to a descriptive bias among men against movies with a female lead, which is mitigated when they are told that the production team is of high quality.

“Not everyone likes every film the same, and gender plays a part in how people rate movies,” said study co-author Prof David Waguespack. –