Earlier this year, researchers reported that many Disney princesses speak less than the male characters in their own movies. Now a new analysis of 2,000 Hollywood screenplays suggests that the picture isn’t much brighter for female characters in other Disney films, or in the rest of mainstream moviedom.
According to a Polygraph study, 21 of 30 Disney and Pixar movies analyzed had more than 60% male dialogue, while five films had a roughly equal gender balance and only four films had a majority of female dialogue.
The Disney film with the highest percentage of male dialogue was the 1967 version of The Jungle Book with 98%, followed by Monsters Inc. (96%) and Toy Story (93%). The films with the highest percentage of female dialogue were Sleeping Beauty (69%), Maleficent (68%), and the 2010 version of Alice in Wonderland (65%).
The report’s authors, Hannah Anderson and Matt Daniels, conceded that the methodology of examining scripts is not infallible, as characters and lines can be cut and added at various stages of production. “We believe the results are still directionally accurate,” the wrote, “but individual films will definitely have errors.”
The gender imbalance extends beyond Disney films, the report says. “Across thousands of films in our dataset, it was hard to find a subset that didn’t over-index male. Even romantic comedies have dialogue that is, on average, 58% male.”
For more findings and some cool infographics, read the full Polygraph report.
This article originally appeared on Ew.com
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