What do Wonder Woman, Hermione Granger, Princess Leia, Mulan and Shuri all have in common?
They are all empowering women to a generation of children seeking a role model to admire.
Women in film who stand up, fight and don’t stick to the status quo are just as important as strong male characters in movies. Women in the film industry aren’t as prominent as men, but slowly, things are changing.
Last year critically acclaimed movie, Wonder Woman astounded audiences with the empowerment of a strong character who shattered stereotypes. Even the actress herself, Gal Gadot was 5 months pregnant whilst filming and proving to be an actual Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman is now the highest grossing superhero film with a box office number of $821.9 million.
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Movie producers need to see the opportunities to cast strong women as protagonists since the blow up of Wonder Woman. Peggy Rajski, Academy member, asked the question that “Over half the world’s population is female. Why wouldn’t you target that audience more aggressively?” The money that recent female lead movies received is case in point. Men are just as keen on seeing women in movies.
The underrepresentation of female leads in movies is staggering. In 2016 the top 100 films of that year there were only 29% of females who portrayed the lead roles. Geena Davis, actress and founder of her own institute on Gender in the Media quoted “Go through the projects you're working on and change a bunch of the character's first names to women's names."
A statistic that needs to change is the lack of female directors in the film industry as only 8% of directors were women in the top 100 grossing movies of 2017. There has only been one woman to receive the Academy Award for Best Director and only 5 other women nominated for this Oscar.
Wonder Woman being