Hopefully you've already heard of the Bechdel test, which asks if a film (or, really, any work of fiction) meets three criteria: There are two or more female characters with names, they talk to each other and the topic of conversation is about something other than a man.
It seems simple enough, but as of June, half of 2014's films failed the test. Now, according to a new U.N.-backed report from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media, we see that women aren't equally represented in their on-screen professions, either.
The first-ever international report on gender images in global films, which analyzed 120 films in the most profitable movie markets worldwide between 2010 and 2013, found that only 22.5% of working film characters (with names and speaking roles) were women.
Women played less than 15% of fictional doctors, less than 10% of on-screen lawyers and less than 5% of sports figures. The only on-screen occupation that offered even a reach toward gender equality was journalist, split nearly 60% male and 40% female.
"The fact is, women are seriously underrepresented across nearly all sectors of society around the globe, not just on-screen, but for the most part we're simply not aware of the extent," Geena Davis, founder and chair of the Institute, said in a statement. "And media images exert a powerful influence in creating and perpetuating our unconscious biases."
The following chart, created by statistics portal Statista, breaks down several on-screen professions found in the report [PDF].
