Hollywood's Gender Divide and its Effect on Films
Examining the Gender of Writers, Producers, and Directors Who Make films that fail the Bechdel Test
BY
Lyle Friedman, Matt Daniels, Ilia Blinderman
There’s this thing called the Bechdel Test. It measures just how male-dominated our beloved Netflix nights really are. To pass, films need to satisfy three requirements:
#1 It has at least two women in it
#2 Who talk to each other, about
#3 Something besides a man
It’s a low bar, but many good movies don’t pass. Birdman fails. Avatar fails. Fucking Toy Story fails. On bechdeltest.com, a site for crowdsourcing Bechdel Test results, about 40% of films don’t pass. It’s a sad state since women exist in life, like, half the time.
Why? Rather than generalize a sexist system, one theory is simple: filmmakers, unintentionally, make movies about themselves (i.e., write what you know). Since the most powerful producers, writers, and directors are men, male-themes permeate into Hollywood’s output. To see if women are more likely to write about women (i.e., pass the Bechdel test), we compiled the genders of the producers, writers, and directors on thousands of films.
First, let’s examine the screenwriters’ gender for 200 films that we know and love.
The 200 Highest Grossing Films: Bechdel Test Results and Gender Diversity of the Writing Team
#1 Film has at least two women in it #2 Who talk to each other, about #3 Something besides a man. Box Office is inflation-adjusted and includes films 1995 - 2015*. Test results via bechdeltest.com. More on methodology here.
53% Fails Test
47% Passes Test
Films with an All-Male Writing Team
38% Fails Test
62% Passes Test
At Least One Woman Writer
All Women Writers
0% Fails
100% Passes
*We looked at films only over the past 20 years to control for progress in gender diversity. That is, in the 50s, we expect men to make a predominate number of films due to low participation of women in the workforce, overall.
Male vs. Female Decision-Makers and the Bechdel Test
When writing teams are entirely male, about 50% of films fail the Bechdel test. Add a woman to the mix and only a third of films fail. The seven films written entirely by women all pass the Bechdel test. Uncanny, right?
That’s a small sample: only 200 movies. So let’s look at every film (about 4,000 movies) rated on bechdeltest.com.
Percent of Films that Fail the Bechdel Test,
Based on Gender Composition of Writers, Producers, and Directors
4,000 films via bechdeltest.com, 1995 - 2015
Girls, we do not, in fact, run this mother. Men are pervasive in startups, CEOs, engineering, politics – Hollywood is no exception. But in Hollywood, it’s plainly visible in the product. When men make films, what’s on-screen reflects the behind-the-scenes brotopia.
There are plenty of flaws with the Bechdel Test, but it’s a crude way to measure the inclusiveness of a film (and we have 4,000 films rated on the metric). The fact that a filmmaker’s gender correlates with the test, we can stop arguing about the merits of the Bechdel Test and start discussing Hollywood’s diversity problem (i.e., 85% of filmmakers are men...more on this later).
Here’s each of the films that we examined and the (mostly-male) individuals involved:
Films that Fail the Bechdel Test and the Creators' Gender
4,000 films via bechdeltest.com, 1995 - 2015. Box Office is Inflation-adjusted. More on methodology here.
When a Film's...
Writers
View All
Are Only Men
Have At Least 1 Woman
Have 2+ Women
Are Only Women
Producers
View All
Are Only Men
Have At Least 1 Woman
Have 2+ Women
Are Only Women
Directors
View All
Are Male
Are Female
Filter
All
$ Box Office $
To Pass, Film Satisfies Three Basic Requirements:
#1 it has at least two women in it
#2 Who talk to each other, about
#3 Something besides a man
18 fail and 40 pass
= Fails Bechdel Test
= Passes Bechdel Test
Films that Don't Meet your Filter Criteria (46% of our 4,000 Film Dataset)
When a film's...
Writers: Male
Producer: Male
Director: Male
Why Inclusiveness Matters
When women are not visible on-screen, we reinforce stereotypes off-screen. Hollywood is promoting a culture of female invisibility, where women can’t save the planet, win the big game, or fight the bad...wait for it...guy. Instead, they’re props who can only gab about men.
Here’s a look at the individuals creating such films: the most prolific directors, producers, and writers in Hollywood.
Bechdel Test Results for Notable Producers, Directors, and Writers
Bechdel Test Results via bechdeltest.com for films 1995 - 2015
Top Producers
Top Directors
Top Writers
Good Will Hunting
It’s important to call out the studios. They make, buy, and distribute films. For example, while the new Star Wars sequel was boss (with Rey and Finn as leads!), Lucasfilms hasn’t had the best track record: 4 out of 7 Star Wars fail the Bechdel Test.
Studios and the Percent of Films that Fail the Bechdel Test
Companies with Over 25 Films Rated on bechdeltest.com, 1995 - 2015
European studios are far more progressive than the US. France is killing it. Canal+ has about 200 films in our dataset, and a low 34% fail the Bechdel Test. US studios are a relative embarrassment: Warner Bros. (53% fail), Columbia (53% fail), and DreamWorks (55%).
Even more depressing? When we compiled the gender of each producer, director, and writer on these films. Men outnumbered women 5:1. Of the 4,500 directors, only 500 were women. When we sort the data by a film’s popularity, it’s even worse:
Writers for 4,000 films, sorted by Box Office Revenue
1995 - 2015, Box Office is Inflation-adjusted
4:1 Men
5:1
6:1
8:1
8:1 Men
$0-$10M
$11-$50M
$51-$100M
$101-$500M
$500M+
Directors for 4,000 films, sorted by Box Office Revenue
1995 - 2015, Box Office is Inflation-adjusted
5:1 Men
9:1
11:1
23:1
22:1 Men
$0-$10M
$11-$50M
$51-$100M
$101-$500M
$500M+
When there is a woman on the team, it’s typically on small-market indie films. On blockbusters, Hollywood has fewer women directors per capita than the military has female generals
.
Whether or not there's unconscious bias against women, things aren't changing. Films made in 1995, on average, failed the Bechdel Test 37% of the time. Today? 38%. Films made in 1995 had about 18% women in director, producer, and writing roles. Today? 17%.
One potential solution was recently proposed by Spike Lee: implement something akin to the NFL’s Rooney Rule. To slow-down the automatic white-guy hire, NFL teams must interview minority candidates for coaching positions. Hollywood should do the same: mandatory interviews for one person of color and one woman for every showrunner / director / writer / producer position.
Something is keeping these numbers from moving. Until they change, we’re left with films lacking the depth of so many new perspectives. Real life passes the Bechdel test; our imagined world can, too.
Thinking about who should helm a film? Try our Bechdel Test Simulator first.
A BECHDEL TEST SIMULATOR: MAKE A MOVIE THAT PASSES
Likelihood of Failing the Bechdel Test
0%
[*] Methodology: first we scraped every film from bechdeltest.com. Then we looked at the release year using IMDB, filtering out anything before 1995. From there, we grabbed the producer, director, and writer via IMDB’s cast info. We ignored inconsequential producers (e.g., line producers) or writers (e.g., character writers). Then came the fun part: we used IMDB bios to gender tag producers, writers, and directors based on frequently occurring pronouns. This wasn’t perfect, since films like Her create false positives. From there, we assigned gender based on first name (e.g., Michaels = “male”). This left about 8% of the data without any gender tagging, which unfortunately throws off the data slightly. If you see an egregious error, send it to us at matthew.f.daniels@gmail.com.
[1] "69 of the 976 generals and admirals, 7.1%, were women" via CNN in 2013. For films with revenue over $500M+, 1995 - 2015, 10 of the 225 directors, 4.4%, were women.