Quantifying the Bechdel test of gender representation in major and independent film

To facilitate discussion of gender issues in media such<br>as film, it is useful to develop quantitative measures<br>which can be applied to a film corpus. In order to<br>scale to large film corpora, ideally we seek measures<br>which are not labour-intensive to apply. A simple test<br>popularised by Alison Bechdel is a lightweight way to<br>probe women’s representation in a film, and we use<br>this as the basis of a quantitative measure. However,<br>the original test is gender-asymmetric, which compli-<br>cates hypothesis testing. We describe a symmetrised<br>version of the test, and use it to analyse a corpus of<br>films from the year 2006, studying the output of the<br>US “Big 6” major companies as well as a sample of<br>popular “indie” companies. We find strong evidence<br>for gender imbalance as measured by the test, and<br>no difference in this respect between major and indie<br>companies. We discuss the usefulness and statisti-<br>cal power of the symmetrised Bechdel test and the<br>derived Bechdel coefficient.<br>