New study finds fewer female protagonists in 2017 films
NEW YORK — Between films like "Girls Trip," "Lady Bird" and "Wonder Woman," 2017 might have seemed like a banner year for women in film, but a new study finds that female protagonists were down 5 percent in the year's 100 top-grossing films.
The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University released its annual "It's a Man's (Celluloid) World" on Thursday. It found that females comprised 24 percent of protagonists last year, down from 29 percent in 2016 despite high-profile releases like "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" and "Beauty and the Beast" — 2017's top two films at the box office.
Researchers determined that while 32 percent of films featured 10 or more female characters in speaking roles, 79 percent had 10 or more male characters.
"In an awards season when talk about women and gender has been top of mind, we need to separate hyperbole from reality," said Martha Lauzen, executive director of the San Diego State center. "The numbers do not yet reflect claims of a tectonic or massive shift in the film industry."
However, black female characters increased from 14 percent to 16 percent, and Latinas went from 3 percent to 7 percent. Asian females increased from 6 percent to 7 percent.
The study analyzed 2,361 characters from 2017′s top 100 films at the box office. It has been conducted annually since 2002.
Recently, a different study found that the music industry was also overwhelmingly dominated by men -- 90.7 percent of Grammy nominees were male, according to a study by the University of Southern California. The study pointed out that the real discrepancy is behind the scenes: Very few female producers, recording engineers, mixers, mastering engineers and songwriters get nominated for Grammys. The study also found that of the 600 most popular songs of the last six years, only 12.3 percent of the songwriters were women. Meanwhile, only a paltry 2 percent of producers across 300 songs were women.
