Women in the movies in 2013

2013 was a year in which female characters were unusually visible at the box office.  Several of the year’s top grossing films, including The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Gravity, and Frozen, featured female protagonists. However, a recent study released by San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women and Television and Film suggests that these films are still the exception rather than the norm. The study was a quantitative content analysis by Martha Lauzen that focused on the gender of the characters in the top 100 grossing films of 2013.  It found that 30% of characters in a speaking role were female. The disparity was shaper when one considered only the most prominent characters. Only of 15% of the protagonists in these films were female. Female characters tended to be younger than male ones, were more likely to have an identifiable marital status, less likely to have an identifiable occupation, and less likely to be portrayed as leaders. These patterns are consistent with previous studies of mainstream film by the Center, as well as with other studies of different media such as television programming (e.g., Glascock, 2001, Signorielli & Kahlenberg, 2001) and broadcast advertising (Stern & Mastro, 2004), and haven’t shown dramatic changes. Despite Katniss Everdeen’s success, the odds still are not in women’s favor, at least not on the screen.