Men spoke twice as much as women in movies released in 2022, according to a new study. In recent years, the unequal representation of gender in cinema is an issue that has been paid more attention by Hollywood and general audiences. This past year saw the release of Sarah Polley’s critically-acclaimed film Women Talking which, with a mostly female cast, shined a further spotlight on the issue and represented a victory for women’s representation.
However, a new study has found that men spoke twice as much as women in movies released last year. A report from San Diego State’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film (via The Hollywood Reporter) found that male-speaking characters outnumbered their female counterparts 63 percent to 37 percent. The study looked at the 100 highest-grossing domestic films of 2022, which adds to their body of research dating back two decades.
More About The 2022 Hollywood Gender Study
In 2022, about one-third of movies (33 percent) featured a female protagonist, which is largely consistent with the prevailing trend from the past five years. However, on a more positive note, this represents a 16 percent increase from 2002, the first year of the SDSU study. Women also comprised 38 percent of all major characters in 2022, a number that has deviated very little in the past 20 years.
One genre in which women outnumber men is horror, movies that are much more likely to feature female leads. In 2022, 43 percent of all female protagonists appeared in horror movies, as opposed to just 4 percent of males. This trend can be seen in some of last year’s highest-grossing horror movies, including Smile, Scream 6, Nope, and Halloween Ends, which all featured female leads. Across all genres, movies generally tend to focus on younger women, with Cate Blanchett in Tár and Viola Davis in The Woman King representing outliers.
Breaking down the female representation in terms of race, white women represented 64 percent of all speaking roles, while 18 percent were Black, 8 percent Asian, and 7 percent Latina, with all other races and ethnicities below 1 percent. In 2021, movies like In the Heights, West Side Story, and Raya and the Last Dragon caused Latina and Asian American representation to increase, though 2022 saw a lack of similar films, with the exception of Everything Everywhere All at Once. While several strides have been made to increase female representation as a whole, this study of 2022 movies highlights several specific areas to address.
Source: Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film (via THR)