female characters are always younger than their male counterparts. The arrival of strong heroines
like Katniss Everdeen in movies of the “Hunger Games” franchise and Beatrice “Tris” Prior in
“Divergent” franchise may lend an impression that maybe women are being represented quite
often fairly and equally in films.
Studies show that racial minorities and women are hugely underrepresented in films and
the white males are hugely overrepresented. “The Great Mancession”, during a financial crisis in
2008, emerged as a particular response to the disproportionate loss of jobs in fields that are
dominated by males over the ones dominated by females (Sutherland & Feltey, 2017). The media
and the press started to push the term and presented graph after graph of the gap of employment
between male and female which was gradually closing in. The idea of this was the major factors
that troubled men such as lower education levels than women, shorter life expectancy than
females, higher unemployment rate that females etc led to a certain “crisis in masculinity”. This
was later translated and transformed in some areas of popular culture, mainly television and film.
David Gautlett in his book, released in 2002 “Media, Gender and Identity” said, “the
traditional views of a woman as a housewife or low status workers have been kick-boxed out of
the picture by feisty, successful 'girl-power’ icons” (Elsaesser & Hagene, 2015). However, recent
research still reveals that in films female actors are valued overwhelmingly on the basis being
identified as a lover, a wife or a mother. Majority of the women characters are portrayed to be
dependent on a male character or other characters. Moreover, research shows that female
characters tend to be over-emotional, and they are more likely to be confined to jobs that are
considered “low-status” in contrast to the ambitious and enterprising male counterparts. Even the
film's that are aimed at the female audiences disappoint more often than not in their depiction of
independent female characters which the real female audiences relate to. The modern influence
of post-feminism may just be one of the main reasons for traditional views of women and gender
stereotypes on the basis of career related and familial roles still continue permeating the media.
Female protagonists featured more often in 2018 with major female-centric films like “A
Star is Born”, “Mary Poppins Returns” and “Crazy Rich Asians”. In a research done with the top
grossing films of the year, it shows that the percentage of the films that feature a female
protagonist has increased from twenty four to thirty one, which is a significant increase from the
previous year. Along with that the roles of women belonging to the racial minorities have also
increased within the previous year but it is possible that there is still inequality.

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