A new study reveals that women have made some significant strides as protagonists and major characters since 2018.

The study, called "It's a Man's (Celluloid) World," was conducted by Dr. Martha M. Lauzen at San Diego State University and it compared the 100 highest-grossing domestic feature films from 2018 to 2019, examining the myriad ways women have become more prevalent on the big screen. Generally, female protagonists rose from 31% in 2018 to 40% in 2019, marking a historic high in feature films. However, while there were more women, males still accounted for 63% of major characters versus 37% for women, and men still outnumbered women 2-to-1 in speaking roles.

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"We have now seen two consecutive years of substantial gains for female protagonists, indicating the beginning of a positive shift in representation," Lauzen said. "That said, it is important to note that moviegoers are still almost twice as likely to see a male character as a female character in a speaking role."

The report studied 2,300 characters across the 100 most successful movies and found that moviegoers were twice as likely to see a male-led movie, even though films with female directors saw a significant uptick in 2019. Female actors were also more likely to gravitate to women directors in more studio projects than independent, which is an inversion from the studio-to-indie ratio from 2018.

Although there are technically more women carrying Hollywood films, the age disparity remains remarkable. Female characters skew much younger than their male counterparts across the board, with most male actors in their 30s and 40s while the female actors are in their 20s and 30s. In fact, 47% of the onscreen men were over 40, compared to only 30% of women.

This age discrepancy could account for the differing ways men and women are portrayed in the plot of the films. More men are shown in specific professions actually performing work, while women are more often shown in personal scenarios. Likewise, the marital statuses of women are more likely to be announced or known to audiences, and women are far less likely to be drawn as criminal or political leaders. In fact, women aren't generally portrayed as leaders at all in film.

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In terms of racial diversity, the film industry did slightly better last year than the year before, but there is still a long way to go. In 2019, 68% of the major female characters were white, compared to 28% African American, 5% Latinx and 7% Asian.

The author of the study clarified her methodology, saying, "Every film in the sample was viewed one or more times in its entirety. Every character who was seen speaking at least one line was included in the study." She went on to explain how she landed on the term protagonist, explaining, "For the purposes of this study, protagonists are the characters from whose perspective the story is told. Major characters appear in more than one scene and are instrumental to the narrative of the story."

Despite the encouraging numbers, it does seem that Hollywood still has a ways to go. Perhaps next year's report will find these numbers have grown even higher.

(via Deadline)