A recent analysis from the University of Southern California found female protagonists, of all ages, are dramatically outnumbered by men on the silver screen. From 2007 to 2014, women played 30.2 percent of all speaking or named characters in the biggest 700 movies. And they were overwhelmingly young, white and straight.
"It sends a message about who's valued and who's not," co-author Stacy Smith told me when the report was published in August . "It doesn't reflect the demography of our population."
In a country that loves Meryl Streep (66 years old), Halle Berry (49) and Holland Taylor (72), it's easy to wonder: What's going on here?
Smith's team at USC found one possible culprit: The people who write, direct and cast Hollywood films are mostly, well, men.
Across last year's top films, women represented only 15.8 percent of "content creators," or those working as directors, writers and producers. Movies with more female content creators feature more female leads, the researchers point out.
The data also show that, when films have at least one female screenwriter attached, they feature more actresses between the ages of 40 and 64.
