Women Given Little to Say in Hollywood's Biggest Films of 2013

[Commentary] Each year, my Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative assesses the gender of all speaking characters (those saying one or more words on screen) across the 100 top-grossing films. In 2013, only 29.2% of all speaking characters (4,506 evaluated) on screen were female. This percentage has not moved very much over time. Clearly, females have been facing a representational roadblock on screen for decades even though they comprise 50% of the population. So, what would it take to change this percentage? To be honest, not much.

If filmmakers just added five female speaking characters to their current slate of projects (without taking away or changing any of the male characters) and repeated the process for four years, we would be at parity.

[Smith is an Associate Professor at USC Annenberg]