The Bechdel Test: Potiche (Dir: François Ozon)

Name of film
Potiche

Were there two or more named women in the film?
Yes

Did the women talk to each other?
Yes

... about something other than a man?
Yes

Was the director male or female?
Male

Comments
Saw this film at the Watershed and love love loved it

No way to start the week, this

I subscribe to the podcast of the Radio 4 Program "Start the Week with Andrew Marr", which means I have a nice chronological record of each week's guests right there in my file management software. Back in February, I chanced to notice that the number of female participants on each program tended to be very stable, and tended to be very low. In other words, one woman per program. Seeing as the presenter is male, and they normally have 4 guests altogether, this meant that most weeks female voices made up at best 20% of the content of the hour-long show.

I wrote to complain, as you do, and got a bunch of excuses in response (women write fewer books; they're harder to contact; they really do try; sometimes they have more than one woman - that sort of thing). I more or less gave up on the show - I've frankly heard enough of what men have to say about the world by now - but continued to have it downloaded to my PC. Today, out of cussed curiosity, I decided to have another look at the last 6 months of shows - inclusive of the period in which I corresponded with the producer.

And the results were - drumroll...

• Out of 21 programs broadcast between Jan 1st and today, 16 (76%) had only one woman on them
• Five programs (24%) had 2 women; none had more than that, and 0% had a female majority on the guest list
• The average number of female participants over a 6 month period is 1.2; the average number of male participants is 2.7
• Including the presenter, on average female voices are heard on the program 25% of the time (less if they happen to not take up an exactly equal share time-wise)

In other words, not much has changed. Intriguingly, there was a run of 4 straight programs in April that had 2 women on them. Was this perchance connected to my protests, made about 5 weeks earlier? Who knows - but just in case it was, why not write to Radio 4 and point them to this blog post?

Oy! Tesco! your gender stereotyping is showing

So, apparently Tesco group their kids' magazines into Girls and Boys.

Boys like:
Pokemon
Dr Who
The Simpsons
Football

Girls like:
Pink
Princesses
Animals

The excellent blogger Forty Shades of Grey has written a letter to Tesco and you can too:

http://fortyshadesofgrey.blogspot.com/2011/06/dear-tesco.html

Wow! Women spotted on HIGNFY

After many, many episodes of Have I Got News For You with NO women at all, this week there were two!

The amazingly funny and talented Jo Brand and Joanna Scanlan.

So that made a nice change.

Bechdel Test - Perfume

Name of film
Perfume; the story of a murderer

Were there two or more named women in the film?
No

Did the women talk to each other?
No

... about something other than a man?
No

Was the director male or female?
Male

Where are the women in politics

Last night i was watching Dispatches, about the 1st year of the coalition.

Although women's rep in parliament DID go up in last year's election, from 19 to 22%, we are still lagging behind when it comes to women's voices being heard in government, and the cabinet only has FOUR women in it, one of whom (Baroness Warsi) is not elected. Theresa May, who splits her time between home secretary and equalities officer recently said in response to 'winnergate' that the left should really get a sense of humour.

So, on Dispatches it was hardly surprising that only 4 women were interviewed in the whole hour long show.

No BME people at all were represented.

In some ways this isn't entirely Dispatches fault. After all, if you want to interview cabinet ministers, women are very very absent.

This comes in the week that the representation of women in Bristol City Council went down.

Bechdel Test on four films

So, over a long break i have watched a fair few movies.

Here's the Bechdel Test round up.

Knocked Up
Pass! Two named women characters who talk about something other than the male character. However, they were talking about worrying about aging. This isn't a feminist film but it did have a funny, smart and interesting main female character.

Salt
FAIL! Only one named female character (Salt). However, she is bad-ass, strong, smart, and certainly not a damsel in distress.

Blood Diamond
FAIL! Two named women characters, but they don't talk to each other. However, Maggie is a strong, intelligent, principled woman who is fighting for a better world. So at least she was three dimensional.

Eagle vs Shark
FAIL! Two named female characters but they don't really talk to each other about anything much. However, Lily is a rocking character who is sweet, funny and far more sensible and caring than Jarrod.

So, apart from Knocked Up, which wasn't a particularly pro woman film (as Katherine Heigl famously said) it was a mixed bag of women's rep over Easter.

Also, saw HIGNFY. 4 men, 1 woman. Quelle surprise.