Wins for women on screen don’t tell whole story
Despite a few high- profile flicks like Wonder Woman, percentage of female film protagonists declines in 2017.
Less than two weeks before the Oscars, here’s some not- wonderful news on the women- in- film front: It’s getting worse.
San Diego State University’s annual “It’s a Man’s ( Celluloid) World” report is out, and it shows that the number of female protagonists in the 100 top- grossing films of 2017 dropped 5 percentage points from the year before— to 24%, from 29%.
Looking at other categories, women accounted for 37% of major characters— no change from2016— and 34% of speaking characters, an increase of just 2 percentage points from 2016.
The findings are a bit more positive regarding women of color on screen in 2017, which reached some historic highs.
Black women increased to 16% in 2017, up from14%.
The percentage of Latinas more than doubled to 7%, up from 3%.
The percentage of Asian females increased to 7% from 6%.
The overall numbers are in contrast to the visibility of female leads in the top three grossing films of 2017: StarWars: The Last Jedi, Beauty and the Beast and Wonder Woman,
said Martha Lauzen, a film and TV professor and director of the university’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film.
“In an awards season when talk about women and gender has been top of mind, we need to separate hyperbole from reality,” she said. “The numbers do not yet reflect claims of a tectonic or massive shift in the film industry.”
The report, issued every year before the Academy Awards, is based on content analysis of 2,361 characters appearing in the 100 top films of 2017.
The center’s analysis shows that men continue to dominate on the big screen. Though only 32% of films featured 10 or more female characters in speaking roles last year, 79% had10 or more male characters, according to the report.
Films with at least one female director and/ or writer featured higher— sometimes dramatically higher — percentages of female protagonists, major female characters and women in speaking roles than films with exclusively male directors and/ or writers.
Therewere some notable contrasts in the demographics of characters.
Female characterswere more often younger than their male counterparts. The majority of female characters were in their 20s ( 32%) and 30s ( 25%), while the majority of male characterswere in their 30s ( 31%) and 40s ( 27%).
Male characters were also more likely than female ones to have workrelated goals ( 42% vs. 34%).