Women are underrepresented in key movie positions, USC study finds

“Frozen,� Disney’s animated musical about a pair of royal sisters, was last year’s highest-grossing film worldwide — and also one of its most unusual, according to a study being released Thursday by researchers at USC.

That’s because one of its directors, Jennifer Lee, is female, and so are its lead characters.

Just 1.9% of the directors of 2013’s top-grossing films were women — a six-year low — and just a quarter of all the speaking roles in animated films belonged to girls or women, researchers found.

The study by USC’s Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative, which evaluated more than 25,000 speaking characters in 600 top-grossing films between 2007 and 2013, found that women continue to be underrepresented both behind and in front of the camera, especially in the genres of animation and action-adventure.

“As Hollywood moves to more serialized content, comic books, tent-poles, this is where we see a big problem,� said USC Annenberg associate professor Stacy L. Smith. “Action-adventure and animation are pulling very heavily male.�

On screen, women were most represented in comedies, with films such as “The Heat,� “Pitch Perfect� and “Bridesmaids� helping drive up the percentage of female characters in that genre to 36%.

Women were least represented in action-adventure films. Marvel movies such as “The Avengers� and fantasy and science fiction franchises like “Star Trek� and “The Hobbit� drove the percentage down to between 20% and 23.9% for the years studied.

Women behind the camera, meanwhile, are scarcer than ever, according to the study. In addition to the low percentage of directors, just 7.4% of writers of the top-grossing movies were women, also the lowest percentage in six years.

“Women just aren’t moving into the higher-budgeted, top-grossing fare,� Smith said, contrasting the numbers to research USC has conducted into independent film, where women constituted 28.7% of directors at the Sundance Film Festival last year. “The No. 1 barrier is financial.... The people who fund films and greenlight content are mostly male. Women are perceived to lack confidence and to be less trustworthy with resources.�

Smith also pointed to previous research her group has conducted into primarily masculine attributes that entertainment industry professionals ascribe to directors.

“The way the role is conceived is, a director has to be aggressive, like a general leading troops into battle,� Smith said.

In addition to issues of prevalence, the study also looked at how gender influences the way characters are presented on-screen, finding female characters much likelier to be sexualized than male ones. More than 30% of females were portrayed in tight or revealing clothing versus 9.7% of males, while 29.5% of females were shown with full or partial nudity versus 11.7% of males.

One factor that influenced those portrayals was who was behind the camera: Films with at least one female producer were 10.6% less likely to depict female characters partially or fully naked than were films with no female producers attached, researchers found.

Twitter: @ThatRebecca