The Number Of Female Characters In Top Grossing Films Actually Dropped Last Year

2017 was a pretty big year for strong female leads over on the big screen. From Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman to Saoirse Ronan's character in Lady Bird, it felt like quite a year for girl power.

Despite this, a new study by the San Diego State University Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film found that the number of female leads in the top 100 domestic grossing films actually went down from the previous year.

Hit play on the video to find out what happened when we went speed dating with Lady Bird's Saoirse Ronan...

Apparently, only 24% of women featured as the protagonists in the top 100 movies of 2017, down 5% from the previous year, with films including Girls Trip and Wonder Woman.

It was also noted that women were more likely to find starring roles in comedies and dramas as opposed to protagonist roles in sci-fi movies and big studio blockbusters.

While these numbers are kinda disappointing, there was a bit of a silver lining. The study found that while diversity within the female protagonist category isn't exactly phenomenal, the representation of women in colour did increase.

The number of black female protagonists went from 14% to 16%, Latina characters more than doubled from 3% to 7% and Asian characters also went up marginally from six to seven percent.

These percentages are still pretty damn low though, proving that there's hella improvement to be made when it comes to representation of diversity in films.

Also pretty unsettling is the fact that the number of women behind the scenes in film as found to have lacked change in 20 years, with women comprising just 18% of "directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors and cinematographers working on the top 250 grossing films," in 2017.

"This represents an increase of 1 percentage point from 17% in 2016 and is virtually even with the number achieved in 1998," the study explained.

The treatment of females in Hollywood is something that has come under great scrutiny recently, and with campaigns such as Time's Up, we're hopeful we'll be seeing a lot more women in these important roles as well as bossing things behind the scenes too.