“Inequality in 700 Popular Films” report reveals diversity bias in Hollywood

White, straight men are most likely to land a job in Hollywood, according to the “Inequality in 700 Popular Films” from the Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, which found that women represented just 30.2% of all speaking or named characters (30,835) across the 700 films that were studied. The report, which studies the top-grossing films in Hollywood from 2007-2014, also revealed 73.1% of all characters (who spoke or were named) in the top 100 movies during the period were white, while just 19 characters were lesbian, gay or bisexual. In 2014, Hispanic/Latino characters that had a speaking role or at least a name made up just 4.9% of such roles in the 100 top-grossing movies for that year. Read More…