I'm past due for my yearly round up of gender representation in animated movies, so here we go! I began this years ago on my blog (when that was a thing) because as a parent, I felt like there were way more male roles than female and I wanted data to verify or refute.

What I found was, on average, 11 male roles for every 4 female roles, and 0 non-binary roles. That has held steady for years but was slightly better in 2018. So how did 2019 hold up? I counted named characters with dialog in the top grossing 11 animated movies in the US.

Frozen 2
male: 10, female: 6

The Lion King
male: 9, female: 4
(I'm still counting this "live action" remake because the parts were all voice over)

Toy Story 4
male: 20, female: 18

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
male: 14, female: 5

Secret Life of Pets 2
male: 13, female: 6

The LEGO Movie 2
male: 26, female: 10

The Addams Family
male: 9, female: 12

Abonimable
male: 9, female: 4

Angry Birds Movie 2
male: 26, female: 20

Klaus
male: 5, female: 3
(counting this one because although we don't know what it "grossed" it was an Oscar nominee and therefore prominent)

UglyDolls
male: 9, female: 9

Out of 11 movies, 9 movies had majority male characters (one tied and one majority female)

That's a total of 141 male characters and 97 female characters, which works out to be a ratio of 13: 9.

13:9 is a MUCH better ratio than 11:4, so I want to stop and celebrate for a minute.

Thank you, writers and producers, for making the effort to be more inclusive! This is the best year for gender parity in roles that I've ever seen!

But...also, it's still a long way from parity. The human and animal kingdoms are majority female, so when year after year, movie after movie, the characters are majority male, this is not "natural," as many critics try to tell me. This is evidence of bias.

"Just let the story happen naturally," people tell me. But that's not how it works. It's human beings with bias defaulting to male characters and only changing to female or non-binary if compelled to do so by story or otherwise. But male isn't default. White isn't default.

I encourage all of us writers in any format to work to be aware of our own biases (e.g. male characters are funnier than female, boys won't watch movies about girls so to be a 4 quadrant movie we must have a male lead, etc) and be mindful as we write.

Note that this is simply showing the number of named characters in a movie, not the quality of the movie or the representation, or how much they speak. Check out https://seejane.org/research-informs-empowers/?itm_term=home for more. E.g. did you know the male characters have more lines in Frozen than female?

This matters because when female characters have fewer roles, they default to the same ones. Stories impact how kids see themselves. We're telling girls: your world is smaller, your options fewer. We're telling boys: you get to do the things, girls are there only to support you.

We're setting boys up to expect to dominate, expect to be the majority. In studies, when women in groups spoke 17% of the time they were perceived as having spoken equally, and 30% of the time was perceived as having dominated.

These numbers directly correlate to gender in animated movies. (Some studies show that crowd scenes tend to be 17% female--sorry not linking to studies, too busy to look up at the moment.) This warped view of the world is directly damaging women in the workplace, in school.

And this warped view is damaging boys and men in their own workplace, in their relationships. Stories matter. They affect how we see there world, therefore they affect our realities. Our politics. Our humanity. Please. Make the effort. Seek parity and inclusion.