Women in Film

Most of us have been watching films since we were born, either it be tv shows or movies. One things that definitely hasn’t developed much since I’ve been watching films is how female characters are represented in them. Most female roles consist of them being sexualized in some way, or represented as being burnable and sensitive. Male figures are mainly identified by work-related, and leadership roles such as business men, doctors, political leaders,or criminals/villains, while women are mainly identified as mothers, wives, or eye candy.  A part of this may be that the majority of of protagonist and main characters are usually male as stated by Indie wire “Only 12% of all clearly identifiable protagonists were female… 75% of protagonists were male, and 13% were male/female ensembles.” Most men are playing the main roles, and you may ask yourself, well why is that? It’s the fact that the film industry is mainly male dominated, writers and directors are mostly male. In Dorothy Pomerantz Forbes article she states that “among the top 100 films of 2014, women accounted for only 1.9% of directors, 11.2% of writers and only 18.9% of producers.” This is explains why we have so many films that mainly focus in the male dominated film, where men are portrayed as great heroes saving the day, full of thrill an excitement. Female dominated films in the other hand are categorized as chick flicks and females are represented as women wooing over men while being over emotional and sensitive. Even when the main character in the film is a female it usually revolves around a male character, them finding their prince charming or dealing with some sort of drama or relationship involving a man. This is where change must occur. Women must begin to be portrayed in leadership roles as business women, political leaders, Scientist, or even criminal leaders. This opens the door for women and girls to begin to viewing themselves in these roles because the stories told in film are extremely influential in our society as Pomerantz states. Another thing that would most definitely help the problem is having more female writers and producers in the film industry. We need to encourage women/girls to take on these jobs because they can do it just as well as men can.