The Next Bechdel Test
Was the supporting cast at least 50 percent women?
Did a woman write or direct the film?
Did a female lead end up dead?
Is there a black woman in the film?
We pitted 50 movies against 12 new ways of measuring Hollywood’s gender imbalance.
By Walt Hickey, Ella Koeze, Rachael Dottle and Gus Wezerek
Published Dec. 17, 2017 at 12:00 PM
The Bechdel-Wallace Test — more commonly abbreviated to “The Bechdel Test” — asks two simple questions of a movie: Does it have at least two named female characters?1 And do those characters have at least one conversation that is not about a man? A surprising number of films wrote the test. But although the test is punchy and has become pervasive, it doesn’t address the core inequalities in Hollywood films.
That isn’t a knock on the test. Alison Bechdel — an acclaimed cartoonist who was awarded with a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2014 and whose memoir was adapted into a Tony Award-winning musical — in no way set out to solve Hollywood sexism when she wrote the test into a comic strip in the mid-1980s. Instead, she was drawing attention to the severity of the problem by showing how low you could set the bar and still watch Hollywood executives trip over it.
A third of the top 50 movies of 2016 failed The Bechdel Test
32 passed
18 failed
Still, 30 years on, we’re not exactly sitting on a superior answer for measuring the movie industry’s gender imbalance. What does the next Bechdel Test look like? The time is ripe for a successor. Is there a short, punchy test we can apply? One that, if movies start passing it, would indicate that the industry is actually becoming better for both the women who make movies and the people who watch them? Is there a new test that could pull the modern film business in the right direction? And if there is, where on earth do we find it?
Here’s where we started: We reached out to more than a dozen women in film and television — writers, directors, actresses and producers — to ask what they think the next Bechdel Test should be. The answers we got ran the gamut. Some addressed representation behind the camera. Others zeroed in on the problems faced by women of color. Still others concentrated on characterization and story — how women are represented on screen. In the end, we boiled their responses down into 11 tests from our film-industry sources — plus one from our staffers.
We then used The Numbers database to identify the 50 top-grossing films at the domestic box office in 20162 and ran them through all our new tests. We split the 50 movies between nine FiveThirtyEight staffers, who watched each film with a clipboard, keeping track of all the things that our 12 tests were interested in.3 Every film was scored by two staffers, and any discrepancies in scoring were debated until we reached a consensus.
Hollywood does decently according to some tests — and absolutely abhorrently according to others.
Similarly, some films get OK marks — “Bad Moms,” “Hidden Figures” and “Independence Day: Resurgence” passed at least half of the 12 new tests. Others did not. “The Secret Life Of Pets,” “Deadpool,” “Doctor Strange” and “Rogue One” each passed only one new test. All told, it’s clear after this exercise that Hollywood is failing an entire gender on several fronts.
Tests that look behind the camera
Movies don’t just emerge fully formed from the ether; they’re the result of the labor of hundreds and often thousands of people. Most of those people are men. For example: The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative looked at 900 movies released over nine of the past 10 years4 and found that only 34 women had worked as directors on those films. If women aren’t in key creative roles — say, if they’re being drummed out of the industry by pervasive, top-to-bottom sexism — then it’s not surprising that the resulting work is skewed. In other words, for every gratuitous sexualizing shot of a woman in a film, there is (almost always) a guy deciding to shoot it that way.
So these three tests look at who makes the movies. Kate Rees Davies, a director, wanted to make sure that not only was there a woman in each and every department, but also that there was a second woman to back the first one up. Jen White, an actress, wanted to see who was on set during filming, to see who was in the room when decisions got made. Jen White, a cinematographer, has developed a tiered metric for judging the gender balance of a crew.5
These tests that look at the behind-the-scenes crew are among the least flattering for Hollywood. And, in fact, the overwhelming maleness of film crews was repeatedly cited by most of the women interviewed for this story as a key cause of the issues they’ve experienced in the industry.
“To be honest, there’s no excuse for these kinds of numbers,” said Uphold. “You want to stop sexual harassment in the workplace? Hire more women. End of story.”
THE UPHOLD TEST
Rory Uphold: writer and actress on “This Is Why We’re Single”
A movie passes if:
- The on-set crew is 50 percent women
BY THE NUMBERSUsing names toestimate gender,“Conjuring 2” was oneof the worst offenders,with men accountingfor about 90 percent ofthe crew.
0 passed
All 50 failed
SHOW TEST NOTES
THE REES DAVIES TEST
Kate Rees Davies: director and producer
A movie passes if:
- Every department has two or more women
BY THE NUMBERSEven though the moviepassed this test, menmade up an estimated73 percent of the crewof “Batman vSuperman: Dawn ofJustice.”
15 passed
35 failed
SHOW TEST NOTES
THE WHITE TEST
Jen White: director of photography; International Cinematographers Guild member
A movie passes if:
- Half of the department heads are women
- Half the members of each department are women
- And half the crew members are women
BY THE NUMBERSWhile still failing, “Don’tBreathe” approachedparity, with men makingup an estimated 54percent of the crew.
0 passed
All 50 failed
SHOW TEST NOTESTests that look beyond white women
When women do get a break in Hollywood, they tend to be white. One study found that among the female leads and co-leads in the top 100 films6 of 2016, only three were members of an underrepresented racial or ethnic group. And that figure was identical to 2015’s. Young girls of color have a difficult time finding movie characters who look like them.
“I feel like we all deserve that,” said Lena Waithe, the actress and Emmy Award-winning writer. “Everybody deserves to see positive — not positive, I’m not a big fan of that word — but accurate and layered and complex images of themselves.”
These tests ask if films incorporate women of color at any level. In writer and actress Naomi Ko’s test, it���s as simple as a looking for a non-white, English-speaking woman who talks in five or more scenes. In Waithe’s test, it’s about a balanced portrayal. About 18 percent of the country is Hispanic or Latino, but Hollywood failed a simple test, from producer and writer Ligiah Villalobos, that looks for Latinas in film.
“It is incredibly disappointing,” said Villalobos, “that we are at the end of 2017, that this country has over 50 million Latinos, and that these are the numbers relating to Latina characters in films.”
THE WAITHE TEST
Lena Waithe: Emmy Award-winning writer on “Master of None”
A movie passes if:
- There’s a black woman in the work
- Who’s in a position of power
- And she’s in a healthy relationship
THE PEANUT GALLERY SAYS:“Why did it have to bethe black character whowasn’t the scientist?”
5 passed
45 failed
SHOW TEST NOTES
THE KO TEST
Naomi Ko: writer; actress in “Dear White People”
A movie passes if:
- There’s a non-white, female-identifying person in the film
- Who speaks in five or more scenes
- And speaks English
THE PEANUT GALLERY SAYS:“Mrs. Otterton is playedby Octavia Spencer, sothere is a non-whitewoman in the film. Onthe other hand, shespeaks in two scenes.”
21 passed
29 failed
SHOW TEST NOTES
THE VILLALOBOS TEST
Ligiah Villalobos: producer; head writer of “Go, Diego, Go!”
A movie passes if:
- The film has a Latina lead
- Who is shown as professional or college educated
- Who speaks in unaccented English
- And who is not sexualized
THE PEANUT GALLERY SAYS:“And they weresexualized. Great job“Zootopia.” How do yousexualize a deer?”
0 passed
All 50 failed
SHOW TEST NOTESTests that look at female protagonists
These three tests — from director Kimberly Peirce, producer Lindsey Villarreal and writer Noga Landau — look at women as characters who have needs and desires and who take actions stemming from those desires over the course of the film. (You know, they act like real people.) A surprising number of films fail to do even that much basic character development work with women. Often, women are reduced to stereotypes or tropes as soon as they’re introduced and then don’t get developed any further. And female characters frequently serve little purpose beyond causing plot problems for male protagonists, or having a baby with a male protagonist, or dying to raise the stakes for a male protagonist.
THE PEIRCE TEST
Kimberly Peirce: director of “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Stop-Loss” and “Carrie”
A movie passes if:
- There’s a female character who is a protagonist or antagonist with her own story
- The female lead has dimension and exists authentically with needs and desires that she pursues through dramatic action
- And the audience can empathize with or understand the female lead’s desires and actions
THE PEANUT GALLERY SAYS:“It’s Pete’s dragon, notGrace’s dragon.”
40 passed
10 failed
THE VILLARREAL TEST
Lindsey Villarreal: producer; assistant on “Mad Men,” “The Strain” and “Bates Motel”
A movie fails if:
- The lead female character is introduced as one of three common stereotypes in her first scene: as sexualized; as hardened, expressionless or souless; or as a matriarch (tired, older or overworked)
But a failing movie can redeem itself and pass if the lead female character is later shown to be three or more of the following:
- Someone with a career where she is in a position of authority or power
- A mother
- Someone who’s reckless or makes bad decisions
- Someone who is sexual or chooses a sexual identity of her own
THE PEANUT GALLERY SAYS:“I thought the cat wasintroduced as hardened,expressionless andsoulless?”
27 passed
23 failed
THE LANDAU TEST
Noga Landau: writer for “The Magicians”
A movie fails if:
- A primary female character ends up dead
- A primary female character ends up pregnant
- Or a primary female character causes a plot problem for a male protagonist
THE PEANUT GALLERY SAYS:“Vanessa causes a plotproblem for Deadpool:She’s hot and he’sembarrassed about notbeing hot.”
17 passed
33 failed
SHOW TEST NOTESTests that look at the supporting cast
The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative looked at every speaking character in the 100 top-grossing films of 2016. Only 31.4 percent of the 39,788 speaking characters were women. One reason for that: The majority of supporting roles, one-scene parts and bits as extras go to men. Does your protagonist report a crime to a cop? Cop’s probably a man. Do they get stitched up? Doctor’s probably a man. Their president’s probably a man, and the soldiers that he commands are likely men, too. Kate Hagan first picked up on this while watching a lecture by Geena Davis.
“I had never considered how strange it was that most one-scene roles or small parts in film end up going to men by default,” said Hagen, the director of community at The Black List.7 “You can never un-see it. The lack of women starts driving you mad. The same goes for crowd scenes: If we’re in New York City, why is the crowd 70 percent male and 80 percent white?”
It may be easier for these oversights to slip through when women aren’t involved in key, high-level creative positions during the production of a film. These three tests — from Hagan, two of our movie watchers, and director Rachel Feldman — look past the top-billed actors and study the industry’s systemic casting issues by examining supporting casts and the background players who populate the world that the stars inhabit.
THE HAGEN TEST
Kate Hagen: director of community at the scriptwriter group The Black List
A movie passes if:
- Half of one-scene roles go to women
- And the first crowd scene features at least 50 percent women
THE PEANUT GALLERY SAYS:“Zero percent women.”
5 passed
45 failed
SHOW TEST NOTES
THE KOEZE-DOTTLE TEST
Rachael Dottle and Ella Koeze: journalists — we helped do this project
A movie passes if:
- The supporting cast is 50 percent women
THE PEANUT GALLERY SAYS:“There were so manydusty men in this movie— too many to count.”
17 passed
33 failed
SHOW TEST NOTES
THE FELDMAN SCORE
Rachel Feldman: director; former chair of the Directors Guild of America’s Women’s Steering Committee
A movie passes with a score of five or higher:
- 2 points for a female writer or director
- 1 point for a female composer or director of photography
- 1 point for three female producers or three female department heads
- 1 point for a crew that’s 50 percent women
- 2 points if there’s a female protagonist who determines story outcomes
- 2 points if no female characters were victimized, stereotyped or sexualized
- And 1 point if a sex scene shows foreplay before consummation, or if the female characters initiate or reciprocate sexual advances.
THE PEANUT GALLERY SAYS:“If she had had sex, thatwould have been theleast offensive thingabout this movie.”
12 passed
38 failed
SHOW TEST NOTESWe need more than one test
One test or metric isn’t going to change an entire industry that has top-to-bottom problems with giving women the opportunities that similarly qualified men get. Indeed, even the tests we have here face serious real-world limitations, relying on our judgment calls in places and gender probabilities in others. And many of these tests are scaled-back versions of ones that we would have loved to run if we’d had perfect information: We can’t reasonably ascertain the sexual orientation or race of 50,000 crew members, but many of the people we spoke to pitched us tests that included that information as one of their criteria.
Still, the trend we’ve identified here is strong, and the metrics used to gauge success or failure do make a difference. We can’t understand where the industry is falling short until we determine what “short” means by giving ourselves a mark to measure against. As a bare-minimum metric, the Bechdel Test does a good job of showing how amazingly far Hollywood is from gender equality. But it isn’t going to push the industry toward an identifiable goal. Many films that pass the Bechdel Test failed most of the new tests above.
In a time when Hollywood is beginning a cultural reckoning and certain abuses of power are getting the headlines and condemnation they’ve long deserved, it’s worth remembering the subtler and often more pervasive misogyny that empowers abusers and might be far more difficult to root out.
How the top 50 movies of 2016 scored on each test
Ranked from most passes to fewest
| MOVIES |
|---|
| Bad Moms |
| Hidden Figures |
| Independence Day: Resurgence |
| Finding Dory |
| Ghostbusters |
| Allegiant |
| Arrival |
| Ice Age: Collision Course |
| Kung Fu Panda 3 |
| Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children |
| Sing |
| The Boss |
| The Girl on the Train |
| Boo! A Madea Halloween |
| Alice Through the Looking Glass |
| Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them |
| La La Land |
| Now You See Me 2 |
| Passengers |
| Pete’s Dragon |
| Sausage Party |
| Storks |
| Suicide Squad |
| The Conjuring 2 |
| The Purge: Election Year |
| X-Men: Apocalypse |
| 10 Cloverfield Lane |
| Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice |
| Captain America: Civil War |
| Central Intelligence |
| Don’t Breathe |
| Hacksaw Ridge |
| Lights Out |
| Moana |
| Ride Along 2 |
| Star Trek Beyond |
| Sully |
| Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows |
| The Angry Birds Movie |
| The Magnificent Seven |
| Trolls |
| Zootopia |
| Jason Bourne |
| Rogue One |
| The Accountant |
| The Jungle Book |
| The Legend of Tarzan |
| Deadpool |
| Doctor Strange |
| The Secret Life of Pets |
| TEST | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BEHIND THE CAMERA | INTERSECTIONAL | PROTAGONISTS | SUPPORTING CAST | |||||||||
Additional contributions by Julia Wolfe.
Movie watchers: Kathryn Casteel, Tony Chow, Rachael Dottle, Meena Ganesan, Walt Hickey, Ella Koeze, Mai Nguyen, Gus Wezerek and Julia Wolfe.
Sources: Bechdeltest.com, Genderize.io, IMDb, The Numbers
1The comic that originally popularized the Bechdel Test did not state that the characters had to be named, but many people using the test, including the site Bechdel Test Movie List, have since adopted this requirement.
2FiveThirtyEight is owned by Disney, which also owns a number of the movies on this list.
3Some tests had questions with objective answers — for example, does the female lead end up dead? Some tests, though, asked more subjective questions — for example, does the film have a black woman in a lead role who has a healthy relationship? We used our best judgement in those cases.
4The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative did not do a study for 2011.
5Over 50,000 people were credited on these movies. As such, it would have been a big lift to check each person’s gender individually, so instead we approached the problem algorithmically. First, we pulled all the crew members’ names from IMDb. Then, we used Genderize.io to calculate the probability that a given first name was male or female. We counted crew members as men only if they had names that belong to men at least 90 percent of the time, which means a whole lot of people with slightly ambiguous names got sorted into one of our “we’re not sure” categories. Nevertheless, even using this forgiving threshold that almost certainly undercounts the number of men involved in a film, a lot movies still failed our tests — counting up names like John, Frank and Jack showed that there were more men than our tests would allow even before we had to consider the Jaimes, Taylors and Caseys of the world, who were probably-but-not-certainly male. More on these cases below.
6In non-ensemble casts.
7The Black List is a screenwriter website that was instrumental in introducing us to many of the women featured in this piece.
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