How Did Women in Film Fare in 2014?

How Did Women in Film Fare in 2014?

Ellen DeGeneres may have hosted the Oscars last year, but that was one of the few ways Hollywood did right by women in 2014. According to a new report from Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, women comprised a meager 12 percent of protagonists in the 100 highest-grossing films of 2014. In 2013, that number was 3 percentage points higher, and in 2002 it was 4 points higher. Women in 2014 comprised just 30 percent of speaking characters.

What’s more, 74 percent of all women on screen were white, while 11 percent were African American, 4 percent Latina, 4 percent Asian and 4 percent “other-worldly”—meaning audiences were as likely to see a non-human woman as they were a Latina or Asian woman in a film.

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Having a woman in the writer’s or director’s chair made a huge difference to women’s presence on the silver screen. In films with at least one woman director and/or writer, women comprised 39 percent of protagonists. But in films with exclusively male directors and writers, women accounted for a mere 4 percent of protagonists.

Women were also more likely to be represented on screen if they were young: Women under 40 accounted for 53 percent of characters, whereas males 40 and over comprised 53 percent of characters. The percentage of male characters in their 50s (18 percent) is twice that of female characters in their 50s (9 percent).
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http://msmagazine.com/blog/2015/02/20/how-did-women-in-film-fare-in-2014/