Media Release
Women are more likely to buy a ticket to a movie written by an all-female screenwriting team, new quantitative research from the University of Melbourne and Swinburne University has found.
Published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organisation, the research found that films with female screenwriters achieve relatively greater box office success in markets where female consumers wield more purchasing power.
Professor Beth Webster, director of the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne, conducted the research alongside Sarah Hegarty and lead author Associate Professor Russell Thomson, both of Swinburne University.
The team assembled a novel dataset that considered the genders of the screenwriting teams of 4749 films released between 2000 and 2022 across 95 markets. It then compared that data to the films’ box office returns, as well as other measures, such as the amount of dialogue shared by female characters.
“The idea that women prefer to buy a ticket to a movie written by women is something that both academia and the average person might know intuitively, but this is the first time it’s been shown with quantitative data,” said Professor Webster.
“Screenwriting teams are not often billed on movie posters or marketed like star actors or directors, but our research shows that consumers still recognise, whether consciously or not, who is more likely to write a film they enjoy,” Associate Professor Thomson said.
“We found only 7.3% of the films in our dataset had all-female screenwriting teams, while 72.5% had all-male teams. There’s clearly a divide in who’s writing films across the market.”
As expected, the research found that films written by women were more likely to feature female characters with a greater share of the dialogue. To consider how consumers feel about this, the team compared how films fared at the box office in markets with different demographics of moviegoers.
“Whether it’s The Avengers, The Hunger Games, Bridesmaids or Crazy Rich Asians, there’s a number of factors that impact whether someone buys a ticket to see a movie. This research found that alongside a film’s genre, marketing or star power, the genders of the screenwriters also plays a significant role.”
The novel dataset was also compared to a smaller set of exit poll results which measured audiences across 259 of the films included. These results additionally suggested that, after controlling for other preference factors, films with all female screenwriting teams on average attract 13–14 percentage point higher female audience share compared to films that do not.
“This is a reminder of the importance of diversity in the workplace. Female representation across every sector, whether it’s science, the arts, or economics, is not just about equity – it’s nearly always a good business decision too,” said Professor Webster.
fbe-media@unimelb.edu.au