In extraordinary news, the top-hitting box office movies of the past four years have all been centred around lead female characters. It’s almost as if featuring women prominently in films still makes people want to see the movies!
As Buzzfeed points out, this is a particularly extraordinary feat given that a study conducted by San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film showed that films with male characters made up 84% of top-grossing movies from 2013 – 2015.
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And yet, from 2013 – 2016, the movies at the very top of the box office list have all had female leads.
Jennifer Lawrence played the assertive Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) and Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part One (2014), which both topped the US box office in those years.
Meanwhile, Daisy Ridley did an extraordinary job in her breakthrough role of Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). This was particularly revolutionary for the Star Wars franchise, which is notorious for its lack of female characters (but of the few there are, they are famously strong).
In 2016 we saw the same trend, with Finding Dory topping the box office (Dory is a fish of course, but still female!), and Rogue One hitting the second spot with Felicity Jones as the lead.
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While this is an incredible result for women in film, what is so disheartening is the fact that women are still paid less than men in the industry. It’s clear that the argument that ‘women bring less people to cinemas’ is not at all the case, and this is why it’s so important for actresses like Jennifer Lawrence and Robin Wright to continue standing up for equal pay, and showing that this should be the expectation rather than the exception.
Hopefully this list of women in movies topping the box office will soon expand to including more women of colour, but this is certainly good progress for the film industry.
