70 per cent of film dialogue spoken by male characters, research finds

For those of you not familiar with the Bechdel test, it's basically a formula that examines whether or not women have significant speaking roles in a film.

It asks whether the script features at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man – a requirement just 50 per cent of films meet.

And if that wasn't enough to get your feminist blood boiling, new research has revealed that female actresses have considerably fewer lines than men. In fact, it's thought that male characters speak about 70 per cent of the total dialogue.

The study, conducted by USC, analysed 1,000 film scripts and discovered a few home truths about gender equality in Hollywood.

When it came to those behind the scenes, researchers found that there were seven times more male writers than female, and 12 times more male directors.

This pattern continued on screen as well, with 4,900 male characters, and just 2,000 female characters featured across all scripts.

What's more, female characters were often about five years younger than their make co-stars.

The study read: “Overall, researchers found that female characters tend to be more positive in valence, meaning they are more positive but this tended to be correlated with using language connecting with family values.

“Beyond the volume of dialogue attributed to men, male dialogue contained more words related to achievement, death and more swear words than the dialogue scripted for women.”

Unsurprisingly, the study also found that having more female writers in the rooms resulted in a 50 per cent increase in female representation, but with seven times more male writers in the industry, it seems the gender equality issues spans across every sector.