Female Roles In Top-Grossing Films Decreased Last Year After 2022 Gains, Report Finds

deadline.com:

After a year of slight gains, the percentage of female characters portrayed in the 100 top-grossing films domestically fell in 2023, a new study finds.

Titled “It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World,” a report from the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University also found that only 18% of the top films featured more female than male characters, 5% featured equal numbers of female and male characters, and more than three-quarters of the films featured more male than female characters in speaking roles.

The percentage of females in speaking roles declined from 37% to 35% ear-over-year, and the number of female characters in major roles remained the same at 38%.

The percentage of films with sole female protagonists shrank from 33% in 2022 to 28% last year. Read the report in full here. “Because Barbie claimed so much of our cultural space in 2023, female characters may have seemed more abundant in films last year,” the report’s author Dr.