Women Had Just One Third of Speaking Roles in 2015 Movies, Study Shows

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Women accounted for just one third of all speaking characters in films in 2015, a 3 percent increase from the previous year, a new study has found. 2016’s “It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World” examined 2,500 female characters in the top 100 domestic grossing films, and the study revealed only 34 percent of major characters were female, representing a modest increase from 2014. However, they do also represent recent historical highs.

The study also uncovered that females comprised only 22 percent of protagonists in all of the films considered, which actually represents a 10 percent increase over 2014, an exceptionally bad year for women in film, according to the researchers. The figure is six percent higher than it was in 2002. Women accounted for just 18 percent of antagonists in the 100 films considered, and the percentage of male characters in their 50s is almost twice that of female characters in the same age range, coming in at 17 percent and 9 percent, respectively.


Women Had Just One Third of Speaking Roles in 2015 Movies, Study Shows Women Make Strong Gains in Depictions on the Big Screen (NY Times)