USC Study Finds Gender Gap in Movie Roles

Stacy L. Smith

A new study conducted by researchers at the Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism at the University of Southern California finds that women receive far fewer speaking roles than men in major motion pictures. By analyzing the top 100 grossing films in 2008, the researchers found that men had 67 percent of all speaking roles.

In addition, the study found that nearly 40 percent of female teenage characters appeared in revealing clothing while just 6.7 percent of teenage male characters appeared in what was considered sexy apparel.

The research also found that only 8 percent of the most popular movies had a woman director. This was up from 2.7 percent in 2007.

One of the lead researchers for the study is Stacy L. Smith, an associate professor at the Annenberg School. She concludes that “Females are still being marginalized and sexualized in popular film.” Dr. Smith earned a Ph.D. at the University of California at Santa Barbara.