Science

Hollywood is STILL sexist: Study reveals women spent half as much time on screen


Hollywood is STILL sexist: Study reveals women spent half as much time on screen as men in films released in 2017 and 2018

  • In the 40 analysed Hollywood films 56 women appeared for every 100 men  
  • And 71.9 per cent of the women who did appear were young women  
  • Study used computer vision technology to analyse each frame of the film

Hollywood movies still feature men far more often than they do women, a study has found.

Despite efforts to increase diversity in top-flight movies, women still only get around half the screen time afforded to their male colleagues.

South Korean researchers who studied 20 Hollywood movies and 20 South Korean flicks found women got 56 per cent as much time on screen as men.

And a vast majority of the women were considered young, while men were various ages.

Women were also predominantly pictured in the home or standing near furniture, while men were often beside cars, the study found.     

A diagram of Hollywood and Korean movies released in 2017 and 2018, detailing whether they passed the Bechdel test

A diagram of Hollywood and Korean movies released in 2017 and 2018, detailing whether they passed the Bechdel test

A research team from KAIST University in South Korea used an AI-trained computer to scan through the faces on screen in the nearly two dozen films. 

Professor Byungjoo Lee, who led the study, found not only a lack of screen time for women, but a lack of character depth to them. 

When female characters did have screen time they often displayed stereotypical ideas of womanhood, more often expressing heightened passive emotions than male characters, such as sadness, fear, and surprise.

In contrast, male characters in the same films were more likely to demonstrate active emotions, such as anger and hatred. 

A graph showing the range and frequency of emotions used by males and females in the 40s movies analysed

A graph showing the range and frequency of emotions used by males and females in the 40s movies analysed

Females were tracked by the software to be pictured with cars 55 per cent less time than men.

WHAT IS THE BECHDEL TEST?

A film passes the Bechdel Test if:

1. The film has at least two female characters

2. Those characters talk to each other  

3. Their conversation is not related to the male characters

They were also pictured with furniture and inside the home 28 per cent more of the time. 

Professor Lee said, ‘Our research confirmed that many commercial films depict women from a stereotypical perspective.

‘I hope this result promotes public awareness of the importance of taking prudence when filmmakers create characters in films.’

Engineer Byungjoo Lee of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and colleagues believe they have created a method more effective at measuring equality in films than the traditional Bechdel Test.  

Using facial recognition software the researchers analysed 40 Hollywood films

Using facial recognition software the researchers analysed 40 Hollywood films

Using the new system, the team computed eight quantitative indicators that describe the representation of a particular gender in the films.

They are: emotional diversity, how much they move, how much of the screen they take up, how long they stay on screen, mean age, intellectual image, emphasis on appearance, and type and frequency of surrounding objects. 

Engineer Byungjoo Lee found the system they created to more accurately and practically evaluate the degree to which female and male characters are discriminatingly depicted in a film in quantitative terms. 

The team believe the Bechdel Test has fundamental limitations regarding the accuracy and practicality of the evaluation. 

Firstly, the Bechdel Test requires considerable human resources, as it is performed subjectively by a person who must watch the entire film.

More importantly, the Bechdel Test analyses only a single aspect of the film, the dialogues between characters in the script. 

The research team believe it does not ‘fully represent today’s various discourse on gender bias, which is much more diverse than in 1985 when the Bechdel Test was first presented’. 

The full findings of the study will be presented at the 22nd Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, which will be held in Austin, Texas from November 9–13. 



READ SOURCE

Leave a Reply

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.