Apparently even female leads aren’t allowed to speak much in movies
A new study proves how little women are speaking in top-grossing films
2016 was the year of badass female movie leads: Rogue One’s Jyn. Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn. Hell, even Zootopia’s Judy Hopps wasn’t afraid to kick some ass when needed.
Despite these gun-toting, strong-as-hell characters’ presence, a study by data-scientist Amber Thomas showed a disturbing trend in 2016’s top-grossing movies: women’s lines account for just 27 percent of dialogue.
None of the top worldwide movies featured more than a 50 percent speaking, female cast.
Finding Dory came closest to achieving a full 50 percent female cast, with 42 percent of the speaking characters being female. Rogue One, on the other hand, only featured a 9 percent female, speaking cast.
Finding Dory was the only top movie of 2016 to have more than 50 percent of its dialogue spoken by a woman.
And we can thank Ellen DeGeneres for that. The Jungle Book was the worst movie of 2016 for female dialogue, with only 10 percent of dialogue spoken by a female.
Source: Amber Thomas
You can view the data here.
As Thomas said in her study:
“We can do better.”