A new study has found that male film critics outnumber female by two to one, and are less likely to mention female directors in their work.
Men comprise 68% of US-based film reviewers, according to a report by Martha M Lauzen that was published by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University. The research pool examined reviewers whose work was included on the aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes in spring 2018. It comprised more than 4,000 reviews written by 341 contributors in print, broadcast and online. The new figures mark a marginal improvement over the last two years: In 2016, the same author reported a disparity of 73% to 27%.
The report also found that men outnumber women in every job category, including critics, freelancers, editors and contributors.
In assessing the impact of gender imbalance, the study showed that male critics were likely to award worse ratings to films with female protagonists than female critics were (with the disparity less marked with films with male protagonists), and films with a female director were more likely to be reviewed by a female critic. Moreover, the figures reveal that female critics are more likely to mention a female director by name than a male critic (89% to 81%) and make exclusively positive comments about that director (52% to 38%).
The report follows a USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism’s study in June that examined reviews of the 100 biggest-grossing films of 2017 and recorded a considerably worse male/female disparity, of 78% to 22%. Its publication was followed by complaints by high-profile actors that this disparity had led to poor reviews for Oceans 8 and Wrinkle in Time.
