Study reveals Hollywood still sexualizes, underrepresents women

Director Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win a best director Oscar (beating her ex-husband, James Cameron) in 2010. Female stars like Angelina Jolie, Natalie Portman, Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and many others both headline movies and make the headlines.

Yet in spite of notable gains made by women in Hollywood over the past few decades, a study has revealed that women still remain underrepresented and sexualized in Hollywood movies.

An analysis of the top 100-grossing movies of 2009 by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism discovered that only 32.8 percent of the 4,342 speaking roles were female while 67.2 percent were male. This gender imbalanced ratio was identical to the top-grossing movies of the previous year.

Female characters were far more likely to be portrayed as sexy. Women were much more frequently shown in swimwear and unbuttoned shirts (25.8 percent versus 4.7 percent for men), exposing skin (23 percent versus 7.4 percent), or described by another character as attractive (10.9 percent versus 2.5 percent) than men.

What is also notable is that young female characters, aged 13 to 20 years old, were just as likely to be depicted in revealing clothing or partial nudity as their 21 to 29 year old female counterparts.

The number of female characters in a film appeared to be influenced by who was telling the story. Films made by female directors featured female characters 47.7 percent of the time. Male directors featured less than a third of female characters. When at least one of the screenwriters was female, 40 percent of the characters were female. If the screenplay was written by an all-male team, 29.8 percent of the characters were female.

However, gender disparity remains a problem behind the scenes. Only 3.6 percent of directors and 13.5 percent of writers were female.

The study took a look at films from 2009 such as The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

However, there was one area where women outnumber men, suggesting a potential area of power. Women bought more than 50 percent of movie tickets in the U.S.

Meanwhile, things continue to be just as problematic on this side of the border. Please Adjust Your Set, a website originally developed as part of a project by the BC Institute of Film Professionals Women’s Initiative and now managed by independent Canadian filmmakers, revealed on September 29 that while 81 percent of this year’s Gemini Award winners (Canada’s TV industry awards) were male, only 19 percent were female. Out of 413 nominees, only 83 were female.

In other local industry news, Women in Film and Television Vancouver is still accepting nominations for B.C. women in screen-based industries for their annual awards. Awards include Woman of the Year, the WIFTV Artistic Achievement Award, Artistic Innovation Award, and many more. The deadline for nominations is December 1. Full details are available at the website.

You can follow Craig Takeuchi on Twitter at twitter.com/cinecraig.