User:Samantha.Soballe/sandbox

Typically women are portrayed as dependent on other characters, over-emotional, and confined to low status jobs when compared to enterprising and ambitious male characters (Bussey & Bandura, 1999). Women in cinema are grossly misrepresented and definitely under represented. The roles that men play are the superhero, the wealthy business man or the all-powerful villain. When it comes to the roles females play they tend to be the housewife, the woman who can't obtain a man, the slut, or the secretary. The true comparison is masculinity versus femininity. There was test done to measure how or if Hollywood misrepresents women in film called The Bechdel testfor film is a type of litmus test that examines the representation of women in media. The 3 factors they test are: 1. Are there at least 2 women in the film who have names? 2. Do those women talk to each other? 3. Do they talk to each other about something other than a man? (Sharma & Sender, 2014). Many roles that are given to women make them either dependent on the male counterpart or make their role more limited. Another characteristic of their role placement is that women are twice as likely to have a life-related role rather than a work-related role. Hollywood rarely chooses to have women be the all-powerful boss or to even have a successful career. There have been some examples that break this Norm such as "The Proposal" or "I Don't Know How She Does It." Even in these 2 films the male counterpart is a strong role and in both the female lead is reliant on both actors for the storyline. Women do not stand on their own in movies and rarely are the center of attention without a male being there to steal the limelight. Some roles that have been portrayed in recent films have worked against this normative such as Katniss in Hunger Games and Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. These roles break the norm which is definitely a step in the right direction. Typically women are portrayed as dependent on other characters, over-emotional, and confined to low status jobs when compared to enterprising and ambitious male characters (Bussey & Bandura, 1999). Women in cinema are grossly misrepresented and definitely under represented and it is up to us as a society to change that.

Murphy, Jocelyn Nicole, "The role of women in film: Supporting the men -- An analysis of how culture influences the changing

discourse on gender representations in film" (2015). Journalism Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 2.

http://scholarworks.uark.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=jouruht