Can the film industry become more equal and diverse by analyses of how norms affect the industry’s business models?

Purpose and goal

Our aim was to determine whether the film industry can be made more equal and diverse by relating norm-critique in movies to their KPIs. From key players in the Swedish film industry we learned that there is a general interest in increased diversity but changes need to be motivated by financial benefits. We defined a list of criteria for norm-critique and analysed norm-critical movie content in relation to their performance. Our results were presented to a dozen stakeholders involved in the industry, along with a proposal for a solution to financially benefit from norm-critique in movies.

Expected results and effects

There are no statistics on genuine equality and diversity in movie content. Implemented measurement systems cover only people involved in film production. But even movies with mainly female cast tend to reinforce norms and stereotypes. We found strong imbalances across gender, age and emotions on screen. The most astonishing results were that women smile more than twice as much as men and that only 5 percent of screen time shows characters older than 45. We were able to demonstrate to the film industry that these imbalances are not correlated to the financial success of a movie.

Planned approach and implementation

In order to determine norms in films, we analysed the content of 10,000+ movies. We defined criteria for norm-critique based on discrimination law and manually determined that 25% of movies satisfied them. Our own code scanned plot summaries on IMDb and determined the most frequent words for movies with mainly female cast (“mother”, “girls”). Using face recognition software, we measured the screen time for women and elderly people in 100 Swedish productions. The same tool allowed us to collect data which we used to define the new equality measure for the excess of women smiling on screen.