Movies with female leads appear to be judged more harshly by viewers than movies with male leads. So says a study published in the Strategic Management Journal, which reviewed 383 million consumer ratings on the IMDb website covering 4,012 films released in US cinemas between 1992 and 2018.
Of these, 28% featured a woman in the lead role.
The study backed these findings with an experiment that involved fictional movie descriptions for each of the 20 genres represented in the main IMDb database. To do this, the researchers used ChatGPT-4 to generate movie descriptions that also specified the experience level of the production team, and whether the lead role would be a male or a female protagonist.
These descriptions were submitted to 804 participants, who were asked to rate proposals from four different genres.
The scientists found that women’s ratings didn’t vary according to the gender of the lead actor, regardless of the production team’s level of experience. In contrast, men’s ratings were lower for films with a lead actress, especially when the production team was inexperienced.
But even when the production team was experienced, male ratings remained lower for films with a female lead. The experts think this may be owing to a descriptive bias among men against movies with a female lead, which is mitigated when they are told that the production team is of high quality.
Still, the findings should be approached with caution. In a news release accompanying the research, co-researcher David Waguespack explains that “not everyone likes every film the same, and gender plays a part in how people rate movies, on average”.
“The key message here is that the average rating isn’t telling you everything,” he added. “In fact, it can conceal a lot. And when the movie stars a woman, look a little deeper.”
It could be, for example, that a large majority of user comments are indifferent, but a minority dislike a film and bring down its average.
“If 90% of people are totally indifferent between the two, but 10% of men hate the movie with a female lead, that average rating is going to go down a lot. But it’s not telling you what a typical person who’s not ideologically motivated would like,” Waguespack explained.
He cited the example of two box-office hits of 2023: “Barbie”, starring Margot Robbie in the lead role, and “Oppenheimer”, with Cillian Murphy as its lead. “If you look at the way the ratings for ‘Barbie’ break down on IMDb, there is a big spike at the lowest rating. You don’t see that with ‘Oppenheimer’.
“This is an example of negative skew, for sure. Typically, it’s not quite that extreme.”
The study also found that putting women in top roles can pay off for studios, especially independents. “If you’re trying to appeal to a broad audience, you care a lot about how the average viewer rates your film. But if it’s more niche, it doesn’t really matter who hates it and exactly where that average falls. It’s about who loves it.
“So even if you think casting a woman is going to drive the average down, but it increases the number of people who love it, that could be a good strategy,” Waguespack concluded.