It is no secret that the film industry, for all the good it holds, also has its fair share of flaws. One particular issue that is hard to ignore is the issue of gender inequality. The New York Film Academy created an infographic highlighting some of the bigger gender discrepancies and statistics in the top 500 films in a five-year timeframe. This infographic is a strategic way to use graphics, colors and easy-to-understand messaging to convey an issue that deserves more attention than it most likely gets.
It is no secret that the film industry, for all the good it holds, also has its fair share of flaws. One particular issue that is hard to ignore is the issue of gender inequality. The New York Film Academy created an infographic, highlighting some of the bigger gender discrepancies and statistics in the top 500 films in a five-year timeframe. This infographic is a strategic way to use graphics, colors and easy-to-understand messaging to convey an issue that deserves more attention than it most likely is getting,
The first major data point from the infographic is that 30.8% of speaking characters are women. While the infographic doesn’t explicitly say it, we know from this that 69.2% of the speaking characters are men, which more than doubles the number of women-speaking characters.
The second and third pieces of data that the New York Film Academy shares relate to clothing or lack thereof. 28.8% of women are dressed in sexually revealing clothing in the films, with 26.2% of the women getting partially naked. With the numbers for men being 7.0% wearing more provocative clothing, and 9.4% of men getting partially naked, it is apparent that women are hyper-sexualized. If talking solely about the 30.8% of women-speaking characters, another point made by the infographic is that about one-third of them are in sexually revealing attire or partially unclothed.
From the beginning of the five years (2007) to the end (2012), the depiction of teenage females in the context of nudity increased by 32.5%. I do find it necessary to note that it is not inherently bad for women to dress however they feel most comfortable, which for some is more provocative, but in the context of films, most of these women don’t have a say in what they are wearing. Therefore, they may not feel comfortable with their sexualization, especially in comparison to male attire.
One of the most shocking pieces of information I learned from this infographic is that only 10.7% of the 500 films had casts balanced equally between males and females. Meaning that about 53 of those 500 films have as many women as they did men. The infographic also stated that the ratio of male to female actors is 2.25 to1.
As I read through this infographic, I thought a lot about the Bechdel test. If you are unfamiliar with the Bechdel test, it was created by Alison Bechdel in 1985, to gauge the portrayal of women in film. The Bechdel test is composed of the following three rules:
- It [the film] has to have at least two (named) characters;
- who talk to each other about something besides a man, and
- who both appear on screen together for more than one minute.
These all seem pretty simple, right?
Well, they are not. A shocking number of films don’t pass the Bechdel test. In full transparency, many of my favorites don’t pass, and I would confidently guess that yours don’t either. There is certainly some controversy about this specific measurement tool of women in film, but it is still interesting to consider how few films meet what seem to be three simple criteria. If you are interested more in this test, I have linked a short youtube video here:
Between the Bechdel test and the New York Film Academy infographic, we see how the film industry can lean in the direction of male-dominated. That’s not to say there aren’t some phenomenal female actors, directors, producers and writers out there, but they should always get the equal treatment they deserve.