Not even a third of speaking roles in popular movies go to women

The woman on America’s silver screen is young. She is white. She is straight. And she is vastly outnumbered by men. From 2007 to 2014, women played a mere 30.2 percent of all speaking or named characters in the 700 biggest box office hits, according to a new report from the University of Southern California’s Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative. That would be one leading lady for every 2.2 leading men.

“It sends a message about who’s valued and who’s not," said Stacy Smith, who co-authored the study. "It doesn’t reflect the demography of our population. And it’s leaving money on the table economically, given that women are half the people who buy movie tickets.” The gender ratio doesn’t appear to be improving, either. In 2014, 21 of the 100 top-grossing fiction films featured a female protagonist or co-protagonist, a seven-percent drop from 2013. The plots of the most recent Oscar nominees for Best Picture, meanwhile, all centered on guys. (For example: “Boyhood,” “Birdman.”) “Clearly, the norm in Hollywood is to exclude girls and women from the screen,” the authors wrote. “It is also to misrepresent them.”