Fewer than half of the 89 films named best picture at the Oscars have passed a common measure of on-screen female representation known as the Bechdel Test.
A movie passes the Bechdel Test if there are at least two named female characters that have a conversation with one another about something other than a man.
This conversation needs to happen just once for it to pass.
The research also shows that a greater percentage of best picture winners passed the Bechdel test in the 1930s compared to the current decade.
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“I think people are doing what they always have done, telling stories that are similar to those they have seen before, without questioning it,” says Ellen Tejle, who has introduced a rating system in Sweden to highlight films which pass the Bechdel Test.
100 Women: How Hollywood fails women on screen, BBC, 3/2/18
