I know I’m saying nothing-percent new when I say things are bad for women in the film industry. But a comprehensive new report, released by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, show that things are way worse for women than (most of us) have imagined. The study, which examined female characters and representation in eleven different countries, identified some super sad patterns that all of us should know about. Here are my top five saddest facts!
- Only 30.9% of all speaking roles went to women worldwide, even though women make up 49.6% of the population.
At just 37.9%, The United Kingdom featured the highest number of speaking women, with India, Japan, and, sigh, The United States bottoming out the list. The United States only gave 30% of their lead roles to women. One of those women was Cameron Diaz.
- Only 7% of Directors worldwide are women.
The UK again tops with list, where approximately 27.3% of all directors are women. The US joins Japan, Russia, Korea, and France at <.1 percent, a number too statistically insignificant to consider. The study also demonstrated a strong correlation between women directors and female-led stories.
- America and Japan feature some of the skinniest actresses in the world, but Germany features the most naked.
Over 52.5% of Japanese female characters and 48.7% of American female characters are skinny, even though Australia is at 23.2% and I’m pretty sure everyone’s obese nowadays. 39.2% of all female characters in German films are partially nude. The study also showed that 13.1% of female characters worldwide are attractive, although I have 0.00% of an idea what that means.
- Female characters aged 13-39 are equally sexualized across age.
You’re just as likely to see a naked thirteen-year-old as a nude thirty-nine-year-old. Disgusting.
- There were only three fictional representations of women politicians, and one was an elephant named Angie.
Well, there you have it.