Yahoo Lifestyle Only 12% Of Leading Roles In Last Year’s Top Movies Were For Women
Marion Cotillard, Reese Witherspoon, Julianne Moore, Rosamund Pike and Felicity Jones, this year's Best Actress Oscar nominees. Photo: @reesewitherspoon Instagram
Hollywood’s a tough town for women. If you’re a director, you face the overwhelming prejudice against females in the industry (in the past five years, only 4.7 per cent of major studio releases were directed by women). If you’re an actress, you have to deal with people like Russell Crowe telling you that the reason you can’t get parts is because you’re not acting your age.
But a new study has released damning data that shows just how hard it is for female actors to succeed in the industry. The research, conducted by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, examined the highest grossing films of last year and discovered that just 12 per cent of leading roles in 2014’s top movies were for women. That’s down from 15 per cent in 2013.
Leading female characters also tended to be younger than their male counterparts, too. Leading ladies in their 40s made up just 17 per cent of characters (women in their 30s accounted for 30 per cent of last year’s roles for women). Meanwhile men in their 30s and 40s accounted for 27 per cent apiece of all main parts last year.
“The chronic underrepresentation of girls and women reveals a kind of arrested development in the mainstream film industry,” Martha M. Lauzen, director of the study said in a statement. “Women are not a niche audience and they are no more ‘risky’ as filmmakers than men. It is unfortunate that these beliefs continue to limit the industry’s relevance in today’s marketplace.”
The highest grossing film with a female lead was the Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1. Mockingjay also went on to be the biggest film of 2014, but it was one of the few female-led films that won big at the box office last year. Overwhelmingly, dude-strewn films (like Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America, Godzilla and Transformers) made the most money, even if they weren’t that good.
Hollywood needs to solve its gender problem, and it needs to solve it fast. Our suggestion is to support more female filmmakers. Research has shown that when you hire more female directors, producers and studio executives, they hire more female crew members and actors.
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