Hollywood's devastating gender divide, explained

On the red carpet, women are the stars of America's film industry, but on the screen they only star in 15 percent of films. And that percentage hasn't gotten any better since the 1930s. Hollywood has a gender problem.

The movies it produces vastly underrepresent women, and portray them in ways that place them as inferior to their male costars. Just 10.7 percent of movies produced between 2007 and 2012 featured casts that had equal men and women. Women are also paid less: The top 10 highest-paid actors from 2013 made a collective $465 million dollars. The top 10 highest-paid actresses made $181 million. When we talk about "gender representation" in Hollywood, we're talking about two things: 1) The percentage of people on the screen and producing what's on the screen who are women and 2) The ways in which those women are represented. Representation onscreen is so important because Hollywood films reach people all over the globe, and they significantly impact the way that we see women in the world. What we see on the silver screen, ultimately, tells us what to believe about ourselves, and the world around us. The most potent argument for those demanding changes in gender representation is this: women make up 50 percent of the population. So why don't they make up 50 percent of Hollywood as well?