USC study finds media gender bias

A new study released by the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism on Monday found that women are significantly underrepresented in film and television worldwide.

The findings of the “Gender Bias Without Borders” study were presented by the Media, Diversity, & Social Change initiative at Annenberg and garnered global attention upon release.

Annenberg professor Stacy L. Smith, the director of the initiative, led a team of student researchers along with project administrator Marc Choueiti and researcher Katherine Pieper. They reviewed 120 films in the 10 most profitable film territories globally.

“We have been studying top-grossing U.S. films for several years. However, the entertainment industry is expanding internationally,” Smith, who presented the study publicly earlier this week, said in an email to the Daily Trojan. “We were interested in how females were portrayed in popular content produced outside the United States. If activists and advocates are aware of international trends, they can be more effective in creating change.”

USC students from various places around the world coming from a variety of majors participated in the study. According to Choueiti, participants included people from Brazil, China, India, Japan, Germany, France, Russia and South Korea. The team watched each film in the study multiple times to ensure accuracy and analyzed a number of different variables.

The data collected showed that women are missing from film. Within the sample set there were 2.24 male characters for every female character. Only 23.3 percent of films had a girl or woman as a lead or co-lead. Action-adventure movies had the fewest females — out of a total of 5,799 speaking or named characters, 30.9 percent were female. The study also looked at facets of physical appearance, including sexually revealing clothing, nudity, thinness and attractiveness. It found that female characters had higher percentages than men in every category, and a female is just as likely to be sexualized in a film if they are 13 or 39.

Gender imbalance varied by country. The study showed that the United States had one of the lowest percentages of female characters in film, while the United Kingdom had one of the highest. The sample of films that were collaborations between the United States and United Kingdom, however, had the lowest percentage of the 11 countries studied.

“In some ways, the findings are consistent with what we see in U.S. films. However, there are several countries that performed a bit better on indicators like gender prevalence in stories,” Pieper wrote in an email to the Daily Trojan.

The gender gap continues off screen as well. Out of 1,452 filmmakers, only 20.5 percent were women. Females comprised 7 percent of directors. Trends in both the percentages of women on and off screen might be related.

“Having a female director or writer is related to more female characters on screen in film,” Choueiti wrote in an email to the Daily Trojan.

Though the study is now published, the team isn’t done yet.

“We would also like to examine other countries, such as territories in the Middle East, that were not studied in this first global investigation,” wrote Smith in an email.

Students said that the gender imbalance in the film industry is a concern.

“There is a certain male dominance in this industry, and even though there are organizations trying to change the situation like Women of Cinematic Arts at USC, the difference is still obvious,” said Ipek Kahraman, a freshman majoring in film production.