Study: Inequality in Gender, Race and LBGT Status

An extensive study from USC’s Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative (@MDSCInitiative) released last week. The 100 top‐grossing fictional films from 2007 – 2014 (excluding 2011) were studied. That was 700 films with 30,835 characters. All speaking or named characters were assessed. The study puts numbers to things we already knew were there, but here’s proof.

Here are a few of their key findings. Infographics are taken from the study results.

Only about 30% of speaking parts went to women.

Only 21 of the 700 films featured a female lead and only 3 of those were from an underrepresented racial group. None were over 45.

Females as young as 13 are over-sexualized and dressed in skimpy attire.

Films are overwhelmingly white. In 2014, 17 films did not have a single speaking character who was Black or African American.

Of 4610 speaking characters in 2014, only 19 were gay, lesbian or bisexual. There were no transgender characters.

In all those years, there were only 28 women directors in the top 700 films. There were only 19 Asian directors, one of whom was female. Of the top 700 films, there have been 45 black directors.