The study, commissioned by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, with support from UN Women and The Rockefeller Foundation, reveals deep-seated discrimination, pervasive stereotyping, sexualisation of women and their underrepresentation in powerful roles by the international film industry.
Indian films, the study finds, have a significantly higher prevalence of sexualisation of female characters and the movies score low in depicting women in significant speaking roles and as engineers and scientists.
Both, the American/British hybrid films (23.6 per cent) and Indian films (24.9 per cent) show female characters in less than one-quarter of all speaking roles.
Even the frontrunners (UK, Brazil and South Korea) feature female characters in 35.9-38 per cent of all speaking roles on screen.
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Sexualisation of female characters in movies is a standard practice across the global film industry and women are twice as likely as men to be shown in sexually revealing clothing, partially or fully naked, thin, and five times as likely to be referenced as attractive.
About 35 per cent of female characters in Indian movies are shown with some nudity, the study finds.
The prevalence of female directors, writers and producers in the Indian films was also not at a very high number.
India had 9.1 per cent female directors, slightly above the global average of 7 per cent, while its percentage of female writers was 12.1 per cent, significantly lower than the 19.7 per cent global average.
This data of gender prevalence behind the camera translated into a gender ratio of 6.2 males to every one female in the film industry in India.