Sexism doesn’t sell: Integrate more meaningful female roles into film

This year, not a single female director or screenwriter was nominated for an Oscar. 

Women’s underrepresentation in media is no new tale, though. Women accounted for 4.1 percent of directors, 12.2 percent of writers and 20 percent of producers in the top 100 grossing films of 2012, according to Stacy Smith, an associate professor at the University of Southern California.  Women made up a mere 28.4 percent of the speaking roles in these movies. 

A patriarchal society, set up to demand this inequality in representation, is to blame for the low number of females represented in media. To combat this inequality, it is imperative that directors integrate female roles with substance into their work, such as the 2016 female-directed “Ghostbusters” movie. Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon will star in the film. 

The incentive? It turns out that sexism doesn’t really sell — films that have superficial female roles or exclude women from the screenplay make less money than those that do. By popularizing the use of female leads in film, Hollywood can combat sexism and see higher returns on investment. 

The “Bechdel test” is the tool used by screenwriters and viewers to determine whether there is sufficient gender representation in a film. The test was popularized in cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s 1985 strip titled “The Rule.”

There are three prongs to this test — There must be at least two named female characters, who speak to each other, about something other than men.

Two data sets interplay to show that passing this test — and effectively integrating women into a film — is more profitable than excluding them.

The first — the official Bechdel test movie list — is run by moviegoers who review films and decide whether they pass the test. Over 5,000 titles have been reviewed thus far. A second analysis — from The Numbers, a leading site for box office data — has surveyed the costs of about 4,500 movies.

The intersection between these two analyses, conducted by Walt Hickey for a column on FiveThirtyEight, reveals that the total median gross return on investment for a film that passed the Bechdel test was $2.68 for each dollar spent. Conversely, the total median gross return on investment for films that failed was only $2.45 for each dollar spent.

Movies that feature more women consistently have higher returns on investment and higher gross profits. So why don’t we see more of them?

“Movies that are female-driven do not travel,” Krista Smith, West Coast editor of Vanity Fair, told Hickey. Since foreign pre-sales are crucial to pay for the vast majority of films, it is detrimental that investors don’t believe female roles will flourish in the box office. 

Despite movies such as “Bridesmaids,” which features a hilarious cast of independent women, Hollywood still hasn’t improved in gender representation. Why? 

Investors think it is more likely that women will see a male-dominated film than males will attend a “chick flick.” Films comprised solely of women, then, are not often funded. “Bridesmaids” is the needle in the haystack.

There is a cyclical nature to this absence of female figures in the media — we neglect to cast strong females, which perpetuates cultural sexism, and then we continue to believe that we shouldn’t cast female roles.

This is why the cast for the new “Ghostbusters” film is so relevant to the scope of equality in entertainment. 

“Ghostbusters” will pass the Bechdel test, so if it succeeds in the box office, it will send a clear message to anyone who still doubts that doing well economically is possible with a female-dominated movie. 

It’s important to note, though, that simply representing women in the film is not the end of the job. If it were, we might only see bland side characters and tired tropes where women are left out of the main plotline.

For instance, 2014’s “The Lego Movie” showcases this trope. Wyldstyle, the lead female character, is a “master builder” in the movie, meaning she can build anything she needs — even without an instruction manual. Still, the male role, Emmet, who is not a master builder, turns out to be “the special” who resolves the conflict in the movie. 

This female character can’t solve the societal problem onscreen, because an incompetent male has been chosen for the position. Men’s gender alone propels them into superior ranks. Women do not get to be heroes, even when they have the exact skill set for it. 

So, even though “The Lego Movie” technically passes the Bechdel test, it cannot be given credit for representing women because it does so inadequately.

There are some good examples of present-day adequate representation, though. Dystopias such as “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent” feature strong female protagonists and are targeted for a younger demographic, which is especially important given the internalization of female inadequacy that can easily take place in younger viewers.

If these endeavours to bring strong female characters to light are successful, they will undoubtedly spark further discourse about including more women in future roles. When it becomes clear that female characters actually bring in more revenue, we’re bound to see more women in media. It’s all about money, and sexism doesn’t actually sell. 

Adrianne Glenn primarily writes about social and cultural issues for The Pitt News. 

Write to Adrianne at adg79@pitt.edu.