Visualizing Gender Gap in Film Industry over the Past 100 Years

TL;DR

This study visualizes a century of gender disparities in the film industry using IMDb data, revealing trends and narrowing gaps between genders in various aspects over time.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive visualization and analysis of gender differences in the film industry over 100 years, introducing new perspectives and detailed data.

Findings

Gender gap has been evident in multiple aspects of the film industry.

Recent trends show a narrowing gender gap and increased female influence.

Women are gaining discursive power in the industry.

Abstract

Visualizing big data can provide valuable insights into social science research. In this project, we focused on visualizing the potential gender gap in the global film industry over the past 100 years. We profiled the differences both for the actors/actresses and male/female movie audiences and analyzed the IMDb data of the most popular 10,000 movies (the composition and importance of casts of different genders, the cooperation network of the actors/actresses, the movie genres, the movie descriptions, etc.) and audience ratings (the differences between male's and female's ratings). Findings suggest that the gender gap has been distinct in many aspects, but a recent trend is that this gap narrows down and women are gaining discursive power in the film industry. Our study presented rich data, vivid illustrations, and novel perspectives that can serve as the foundation for further studies on related topics and their social implications.