• Women are making slow just steady progress towards equality in the movies.
  • New research says two-fifths of films in 2019 had female protagonists – a tape high.
  • But much more needs to be done to close Hollywood'southward gender gap.

For women aspiring to conquer Hollywood, the nominations for the 2020 Oscars made dispiriting reading. The nods for best director were all male – and not for the first fourth dimension.

But a new report of the highest-grossing films of 2019 from the Center for the Report of Women in Goggle box and Film at San Diego State University shows that Hollywood is slowly irresolute.

Last yr, 40% of the 100 highest-grossing films featured a female protagonist – the largest percentage ever. Women accounted for 37% of major characters, up ane percentage bespeak on the previous year.

hollywood oscars awards women men female male girls boys teenagers teens development gender gap parity equality diversity progress change femmine masuline woman man sex biology roles dynamic balance bias androgynous

Figure 1. Percentages of Films Featuring Females, Males and Ensembles as Protagonists.

Epitome: Women in TV and Film

The written report, Information technology'south a Man'south (Celluloid) World, analyzed 2,300 characters and concluded that progress towards closing Hollywood's gender gap, although steady, is yet painfully deadening.

Seen but non heard

The writer Dr. Martha M. Lauzen, professor of film and goggle box at San Diego Country Academy, says gender stereotyping persists in the way women are portrayed. For example, audiences were told the marital condition of 46% of female characters, as opposed to just 34% of male protagonists.

Almost 3-quarters of male characters had an identifiable occupation compared to fewer than ii-thirds of female characters. And male protagonists were much more likely to be shown at work. Just merely over a quarter of the characters who were leaders were women.

What's the World Economic Forum doing about the gender gap?

The World Economic Forum has been measuring gender gaps since 2006 in the annual Global Gender Gap Written report.

The Global Gender Gap Report tracks progress towards closing gender gaps on a national level. To plow these insights into concrete activeness and national progress, we have adult the Closing the Gender Gap Accelerators model for public private collaboration.

These accelerators take been convened in ten countries across three regions. Accelerators are established in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, and Panama in partnership with the InterAmerican Development Banking company in Latin America and the Caribbean, Arab republic of egypt and Jordan in the Middle E and Northward Africa, and Kazakhstan in Central Asia.

All State Accelerators, along with Cognition Partner countries demonstrating global leadership in closing gender gaps, are part of a wider ecosystem, the Global Learning Network, that facilitates exchange of insights and experiences through the Forum'south platform.

In 2019 Egypt became the first state in the Middle East and Africa to launch a Closing the Gender Gap Accelerator. While more women than men are now enrolled in academy, women correspond only a lilliputian over a third of professional and technical workers in Egypt. Women who are in the workforce are also less likely to be paid the aforementioned as their male colleagues for equivalent work or to reach senior management roles.

In these countries CEOs and ministers are working together in a three-year time frame on policies that help to further shut the economic gender gaps in their countries. This includes extended parental leave, subsidized childcare and removing unconscious bias in recruitment, memory and promotion practices.

If you are a business in 1 of the Endmost the Gender Gap Accelerator countries you can bring together the local membership base.

If you are a concern or government in a land where we currently do non have a Closing the Gender Gap Accelerator you can reach out to us to explore opportunities for setting one up.

hollywood oscars awards women men female male girls boys teenagers teens development gender gap parity equality diversity progress change femmine masuline woman man sex biology roles dynamic balance bias androgynous

Figure 5. Historical Comparison of Percentages of Females and Males every bit Major Character

Image: Women in Boob tube and Film

Male characters are more probable to be heard, too. Ii-thirds of the speaking parts were male. Half as many women were given an on-screen vocalisation.

Overall, audiences were almost twice as likely to encounter male than female characters in the summit 100 films, says Lauzen.

Her research shows that men continue to dominate action movies, while women's roles were concentrated in horror films and dramas, with only 16% of action characters portrayed by women. Scientific discipline fiction fared even worse – only 8% of protagonists were female person.

Generally, female characters were younger than their male person counterparts – more than than half were in their 20s and 30s compared to almost 60% of male person characters aged in their 30s and 40s.

Mind the gap

Women directed twice as many of the top films terminal year compared to 2018. A fifth of all directors, writers, producers, editors and cinematographers on the superlative 100 grossing films of 2019 were women, according to the Celluloid Ceiling report from the Center for the Study of Women in Tv set and Film at San Diego Land Academy.

Withal no female person directors were nominated for this year's Gold Earth awards or in the best managing director category at the 2020 Oscars. The report says the gender of the person behind the camera is key to delivering equality on screen. Lauzen's analysis shows that when a motion picture has at to the lowest degree 1 female managing director or author, women are more probable to be cast for central roles. When women straight, virtually 60% of protagonists in a moving-picture show are female, every bit opposed to fewer than a third when men are directing.

Hollywood is not solitary in struggling with diversity. The Globe Economic Forum'southward Global Gender Gap Report details how women around the earth are still paid less than men for similar work – and are seriously under-represented in senior roles.

The Forum says that at the current rate of progress, it will take about a century to close the gender gap. Given the role of films and the wider media in influencing social attitudes, having more women on screen might be 1 style to advance progress towards equality.

This article has been corrected to reverberate the fact that the Celluloid Ceiling Study is from the Heart for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego Country Academy not the Women'southward Media Centre, as previously stated.