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Cherith CutestoryHillary Crosley Coker
8/06/15 7:00pm
It’s so fucking disheartening. And I don’t just think it’s a Hollywood problem. We, the audience, talk about female characters differently than males. Even here. We judge them more harshly than men. If multiple men are cast for a project it’s often cool. If multiple women they are more often than not pited against each other.

It won’t change until the whole we way talk about women compared to the way we talk about men changes. It’s not just a studio problem.
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  The Other KardashianCherith Cutestory
  8/07/15 8:07am
  I think TV is miles ahead of films in this regard. I don’t know if the percentages are higher, but when I just think off the top of my head of series from the past few years with great female leads:
  
  30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, Orphan Black, Inside Amy Schumer, Broad City, Girls, Orange is the New Black, My Mad Fat Diary, The Mindy Project, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Veep, The Comeback.
  
  Even ensemble shows and shows where women aren’t necessarily the leads have some great female characters: Game of Thrones, Empire, American Horror Story, House of Cards... Even Bob’s Burgers has great female characters!
  
  Obviously not all the shows I mentioned have female characters that are great in the sense of being empowered and independent, but they all have characters that are three dimensional. To me, that’s way more important than having inspiring characters. Sure, make your female character a selfish asshole! But give her a reason to be like that! A reason that isn’t just “so she can fuck up the male lead’s plan!” Make her so brilliantly awful that we can’t help but love her! (Robin Wright! Jessica Lange! Taraji P. Henson!)
  
  When I think of films with the same all that comes to mind is Inside Out, Blue is the Warmest Colour, Obvious Child and Trainwreck. And two of those were written by men (which I actually think is kind of awesome).
  
  I think TV is proving women want to watch great female characters. I didn’t think my boyfriend would be interested in watching The Mindy Project, Broad City, Orange is the New Black or Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but he was and he LOVED them.
  
  Studios give us movies with shitty female characters (waddup Sofia Vergara and Reese Witherspoon) and when audiences don’t respond they throw up their hands and say “See! No one wants to watch women!”. Fuck that.
  
  I think (hope!) that the huge amount of attention that’s being paid to shows on TV/Netflix/whatever will make studio execs wake up and realise audiences are way smarter and more aware than they thought.
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  Cherith CutestoryThe Other Kardashian
  8/07/15 8:28am
  TV is better but I don’t think it’s so great. You can list all of the shows (many no longer on). You couldn’t easily do that for men. And we are nowhere close to accepting flawed female protagonists that are the norm for men. The double standard is ridiculous. Don Draper raped a woman a few feet away from his wife and the woman’s husband. He doesn’t get a fraction of the criticism that someone like Nancy Botwin, Skyler or Piper Chapman gets.
  
  We are willing to accept so little that TV seems great in comparison.
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E=MC HammeredHillary Crosley Coker
8/06/15 6:36pm
- 21 of the 700 films surveyed had a female lead. This number is similar to 2007’s 20 percent and a drop from 2013’s uptick of 28 percent of leading ladies.

Is that supposed to read 21 percent of the 700 films? I assumed that was a typo, but the very next bullet also refers to 21 being the number of films, not the percentage.

- 3 of those 21 films starred a woman of color, none were lesbian or bisexual nor 45 years old or older.

Not trying to be snarky, just curious because there is a big difference between 21 of 700 and 21 percent of 700, obviously.
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  ambitiousE=MC Hammered
  8/06/15 6:41pm
  21. Not percent. Just 21.
  
  But I think it should be of 100, not 700 (as per the report).
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  ambitiousambitious
  8/06/15 6:48pm
  
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ShorttermlistenerHillary Crosley Coker
8/06/15 6:52pm
Why is it that whenever Jezebel does an article about “women of Hollywood” it is almost EXCLUSIVELY about actresses and directors? There are SO MANY OTHER PARTS OF FILM AND TELEVISION PRODUCTION. How about some fucking articles about women editors or directors of photography or best boys or costumers or production designers or producers or grips or sound editors or prop masters? I’m not saying that those two specific categories aren’t important, but they aren’t the only facets of film making.
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  ambitiousShorttermlistener
  8/06/15 6:54pm
  Did you not read the ninth bullet point?
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  HotLips HoulihanShorttermlistener
  8/06/15 7:23pm
  Yup, massive gender disparity in the ranks. And yep, it’s ignorant when people overlook the contributions of the crew/post etc. in terms of the quality of the finished product.
  
  BUT: all decisions about content are made above the line. So— when we’re talking about the amount of diversity we visibly see on screen and what types of stories we’re choosing to tell (as it seems we are, in this article) — then it’s fair to take note of who is making those decisions. Writers, directors, producers and studios.
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Jurassic PorkerHillary Crosley Coker
8/06/15 6:51pm
Meanwhile...

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EleniRPGHillary Crosley Coker
8/06/15 7:06pm
The first two points on your list apply to the 700 top films from 2007-2014, but most of the points actually apply only to the top 100 films of 2014. While for some of the points it is simply not clear whether they apply to 2014 only or 2007-2014, the 3rd point contains an error:

- 21 of the 700 films surveyed had a female lead. This number is similar to 2007’s 20 percent and a drop from 2013’s uptick of 28 percent of leading ladies.

21 of the 100 top 2014 films had a female lead. (This makes the comparison to 2007 make much more sense...it’s not like 2007 had 20 female-led films and then from 2008-2014 there was just one more). I read another article about this yesterday that made a similar mistake mixing up the 700 statistics with the 100 statistics.
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