Only 7% of Movies in 2021 Featured More Women than Men, Study Finds
variety.comPat Saperstein Deputy EditorMale characters in films continued to heavily outnumber female characters in 2021, according to the latest It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World study from Dr.
Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.A hefty 85% of films featured more male than female characters, the study found.
Male characters outnumbered females by almost two to one, and just 31% of films featured sole female protagonists. Only 7% of films had more female than male characters, while 8% of films featured equal numbers of female and male characters.Major female characters in 2021 dropped slightly from 2020, from 38% in 2020 to 35% of major characters last year.
Females made up 34% of all speaking characters, down from 36% in 2019, while sole female protagonists increased ever so slightly from 29% in the first year of the pandemic to 31% last year. “Despite the major disruptions in the film business over the last couple of years, on-screen gender ratios have remained relatively stable,” Lauzen noted. “Last year audiences saw almost two male characters for every female character, and although women protagonists led some of the most high-profile films including ‘Spencer,’ ‘Being the Ricardos’ and ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye,’ women comprised slightly less than one third of sole protagonists last year.”The study found that despite an increase in Asian and Latina roles for women, much of the uptick was concentrated in a handful of films.
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