"28.4% of the top-100 grossing films of 2012 included speaking roles for women" #skeptic

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According to this article, only 28.4% of the top-100 grossing films of 2012 included speaking roles for women. (Hat tip to @lindseybieda for the heads up!)

According to Wolfram Alpha (I'm happy to use a better or more complete source if one is available... Also I don't have a ton of time to put into this research at the moment...), the top 10 are:

1. The Avengers (Scarlett Johansson, Gwyneth Paltrow)
2. The Dark Knight Rises (Anne Hathaway, Marion Cotillard)
3. The Hunger Games (Jennifer Lawrence, Elizabeth Banks)
4. Skyfall (Dame Judy Dench, Naomi Harris)
5. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Cate Blanchett - maybe?)
6. Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (Kristen Stewart, Ashley Greene)
7. The Amazing Spider-Man (Emma Stone, Sally Field)
8. Brave (Kelly Macdonald [Merida], Emma Thompson [Elinor], Julie Walters [Witch])
9. Ted (Mila Kunis)
10. Madagascar 3 (Jada Pinkett Smith [Gloria], Jessica Chastain [Gia])

I didn't see all of these films but I've included IMDB links to each for the purpose of cast lookup. Obviously we can't expect the top 10 to be completely representative of the top 100, but I find it an interesting contrast (100%) to the statistic of the top 100, of which supposedly only 28.4% include speaking roles for women.

I'm struggling to remember whether or not Cate Blanchett had a speaking role in The Hobbit; which as a fact probably says plenty on its own. So 90% of the top ten, then. (But weren't some or most of the LOTR movies narrated by a woman?)

Perhaps what's more interesting is that only three (Hunger Games, Twilight, Brave) of the top ten have women in a leading role. I'm not including The Avengers because (a) Black Widow was a pretty lame hero, and (b) her involvement in the movie was actually minimal considering all of the other heroes' screen time. However, this probably speaks more to the culture of 1980's and 1990's Marvel writing than present day Hollywood. I'll also give partial credit for Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises, but again, that falls equally at the feet of Hollywood and DC Comics.

Now that I think about it, perhaps the inclusion of Black Widow was actually an intentional effort to be more inclusive and balanced. There are several other Marvel universe heroes that could have been included, not least of which would be Spider Man. I mean, they're already in New York, for crying out loud. So, perhaps some credit is due somewhere in the current Hollywood culture for making the effort to get a female hero included, even if it wasn't a leading role.

All of this is to say that I'm skeptical of the claim that less than 30% of the top grossing films for 2012 include speaking roles for women. If you said "lead speaking roles" I would find that much easier to believe; but if we're to do any extrapolation at all from the top ten, it would seem to indicate that women get speaking roles in almost every movie.

Don't take this the wrong way: I would be thrilled to see more leading, prominent women in less-sexualized roles. For that matter, where are the gay characters? The most prominent gay character I can think of would be Lafayette on True Blood (TV). The last stand-out gay character I remember from a movie goes back to Brokeback Mountain.

Another curious point: If it's the top-100, how exactly did they come to the number 28.4%? 28 movies would be 28%, 29 would be 29%. Unless they gave partial credit, it's a mathematical impossibility...

It looks like this was a misinterpretation of this USC study. The study actually found that 28.4% of speaking parts were female, not that 28.4% of films had a female speaking part. This is a very different and much more believable result (and of course it still reflects a horrible and sexist trend in Hollywood).