Millions of people watch movies. They entertain us, distract us from our own realities and take our emotions on a rollercoaster ride. Movies can also be indicative of flaws in our society, exposing deeper issues that we don’t see until they’re reflected in our faces. At times, though, the movies themselves are the problems. When it comes to female representation in particular, Hollywood needs to do better.
Dr. Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, conducted a 2025 study about the portrayal of female characters in top US movies. According to the study, the percentage of top-grossing films in America with female protagonists plummeted in 2025, declining from 42% in 2024 to 29%. The percentage of major female characters also dropped, from 39% to 36%, and the percentage of female characters with speaking roles was only 38%. In 2024, roughly 50.5% of the United States population was female, over double the percentage of female protagonists found in the study. Representation is supposed to truly match the demographics of the population, and it’s obvious that it doesn’t.
In general, female representation in movies cannot be quantified by a single statistic, as it varies by the producing studios. A study by Dr. Katherine Pieper at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that 66.7% of Universal Pictures’ films across the top 100 movies of 2024 featured female-identified leads or co-leads. This was followed by Warner Bros. Pictures’ 55.6%, Lionsgate’s 54.4%, and 38.5% of Sony Pictures’ films. While some studios, like Universal, seem to be working to close the gap in gender representation, it’s clear that others are only furthering the disparity.
To highlight the lack of female portrayals, cartoonist Alison Bechdel created the Bechdel Test, a benchmark for measuring female representation in a film, in 1985. The Bechdel Test has three requirements: the movie must have at least two women in it, the women must talk to each other at least once and their conversation must be about anything other than a man. Sometimes, there’s an additional requirement that the two women must be named. While Bechdel originally created the test as a joke, it has since become a legitimate tool not only in quantifying female representation within a singular film, but in standardizing the metric so it can be compared between different films.
In a 2023 interview with The Guardian, Bechdel was asked if she was dismayed that so many films fail the test.
“What’s really dismaying now is the way so many movies cynically try to take shortcuts and feature strong female characters,” she said, “but they just have a veneer of strength and they’re still not fully developed characters.”
On the opposite side of the spectrum, the Bechdel Test is not the end-all be-all for female representation in film, as some movies fail the test but still have strong female characters. One such instance is “Mulan,” in which a woman proves she is just as mighty and capable as a man.
A more controversial example is “F1,” which was nominated for Best Picture at the 98th Academy Awards, otherwise known as the Oscars, this year. The movie features two main female characters—Bernadette, the mother of driver Joshua Pearce, and Kate, the fictional first female technical director in Formula 1 history. There is also a female pit crew mechanic named Jodie, but since none of the three characters talk to each other, the film fails the second of the test’s criteria. Despite this, many cite Kate’s advanced position and her discussion of the hurdles she had to overcome to achieve it as evidence of strong female representation in the film. Yet under her direction, the team is portrayed as the worst in the league, and Brad Pitt’s character Sonny calls the car “a s–tbox” until Kate accepts his suggestions for how to improve it.
How can “F1” be thought to have strong female representation when Kate’s power, the movie’s feminist saving grace, is repeatedly undermined and dismissed by Sonny? And how can the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Oscars, think the film is deserving of Best Picture when there isn’t a single conversation in its runtime of two hours and 35 minutes without a man? “F1” is remarkable in many ways, particularly its cinematography and visual effects. In regard to female representation, though, it’s evident that the film is lacking.
But should the Academy—or anyone—be putting limits on what a film can or cannot do to be considered “best?” Filmmaking is inherently an art form, and art should not be restricted. There is a very fine line between ensuring adequate representation and limiting artistic freedom, one that often seems to feel invisible to viewers and Hollywood alike.
Perhaps unexpectedly, the Academy does have representation and inclusion standards that films must meet to be eligible for Best Picture. The requirements are separated into four categories, each of which have their own subcriteria. A film only has to fulfill one subcriterion to meet the standard for that category, and a film must match at least two of the four categories to be considered for Best Picture. Standard A is on-screen representation, themes and narratives, which comprises the lead and supporting actors, the ensemble and the movie’s plot. Standard B is the creative leadership and project team, which has subcriteria pertaining to the department heads, overall crew composition and more. Standard C is about industry access and opportunities. It covers aspects like paid apprenticeships or internships for people from underrepresented groups, as well as skill development opportunities for underrepresented groups within the crew. Standard D regards audience development and addresses representation in the film’s development, marketing, publicity and distribution.
So even though “F1” lacks female representation, there were many other possible ways for it to qualify for Best Picture. Isn’t it odd, though, that only one of the categories pertains to what the audience actually sees? A film could have a cast composed entirely of straight, white, 30-year-old men and still be eligible by satisfying the representation standards in other categories. On the other hand, these requirements spotlight just how much goes on behind the scenes that audiences don’t think about. Just as it’s important to be inclusive on-screen, it’s crucial to be inclusive within the crew, leadership positions and more, as demonstrated by the fact that representation in these sectors is enough to qualify the entire movie.
Even when women are represented on-screen, there are still issues, particularly with age. Lauzen found that in the top-grossing US films of 2025, the majority of female characters were in their 20s and 30s, while the majority of male characters were in their 30s and 40s. Women 60 years and older made up a mere 2% of all major female characters, whereas men aged 60 and older comprised 8% of all major male characters.
This phenomenon isn’t new. The 1950 film “Sunset Boulevard” is a social satire on the Hollywood machine and critiques this exact problem. In the movie, actress Gloria Swanson plays Norma Desmond, a washed-up silent film star trying to make her way back into the limelight. Filmmaker and actor Cecil B. DeMille plays himself, acting as a successful Hollywood director in the middle of shooting another film. In the movie, DeMille tells Desmond, “I am old enough to be your father.” Though very short, this line carries significant weight, highlighting the disparity in career length between men and women at the time. In the movie, DeMille must be at least 25 years older than Desmond. Since he is a man, his career is still flourishing, while Desmond’s is deemed finished despite her much younger age. While this gap has closed somewhat since 1950, the progress isn’t enough.
Hollywood’s ageism is telling of American culture. By putting older men on the big screen but not older women, Hollywood reinforces the cultural belief that men can be powerhouses at any age, while women don’t deserve to be in the spotlight past middle age.
It’s not only older women who are especially underrepresented in film, but women of color, too. Per the Annenberg study, only 13 of 2024’s top 100 movies had a woman of color in the leading role, which is down from 14 movies in 2023. Combining the trends on race and age, only one of the top 100 movies featured a woman of color at least 45 years old in a leading or co-leading role. According to the most recent census, approximately 41.6% of the US population identifies as people of color. No studio came close to proportionally representing this in 2024, even with statistics for men of color included.
This year, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” winner of Best Picture at the 2026 Oscars, drew significant attention to the role of Black women in film. The character Perfidia only appears for roughly 35 minutes of the three-hour movie, but has a big presence in the film and the conversation about it. Perfidia’s extreme moral ambiguity left many viewers questioning what the portrayal means for Black women in real life. Some believe her character echoes the Jezebel trope, in which Black women are represented as seductive and lewd in comparison to white female characters crafted as modest and self-respecting. If films created today are reminiscent of harmful stereotypes, it’s an issue with the industry that permits this to happen.
Unfortunately, female underrepresentation isn’t limited to what audiences see on-screen. In another report, Lauzen compiled annual analyses of the top 250 highest-grossing films from 1998 to 2025 to study female employment behind the scenes. The results are astounding.
The percentage of female editors in 2025 was 20% in 1998 and 2025—a 0% increase across 27 years. The 4% increase in the percentage of female producers was only marginally better, from 24% to 28%. The percentage of female writers increased 7%, from 13% to 20%, and despite a significant focus on increasing the number of female directors, there were still only 5% more female directors for the top 250 highest-grossing films in 2025 than in 1998. While the percentage of female cinematographers only increased 3% throughout the 27 years, from 4% in 1998 to 7% in 2025, female cinematographers achieved victory in other ways. At this year’s Oscars, Autumn Durald Arkapaw of “Sinners” made history as the first woman to win an award for best cinematography.
Most people are unaware of this gender imbalance, as there’s little attention paid to the issue. Thus, there’s no pressure forcing the industry to change. Roughly half of film school graduates are female, so there isn’t a lack of female interest or talent; rather, it’s a hiring issue.
The widely popular release of “Barbie” in 2023 sparked many conversations about female representation in film and garnered hope that more movies would be told from female perspectives. Unfortunately, the massive success of Barbie seems to be a one-time accomplishment and did not set the feminist precedent so many were waiting for. While “Barbie” certainly made strides in the world of female representation in film, Hollywood was not able to maintain the momentum and is still falling flat.
Representation isn’t supposed to be a mirror image of our world, but it should be close to reflective of our population. Women have been aspiring for equal representation on-screen and behind the scenes for decades, and we can only hope the waiting game ends soon. Hollywood needs to increase the quantity and quality of its female representation, and the industry needs to do it soon.
