THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN THE U.S MEDIA 2015

LGBT characters—mainly male ones—were in 17.5 percent of major
films released in 2014, GLAAD says
Issuing its third annual Studio Responsibility Index, GLAAD concluded that LGBT characters
were depicted in 20 of the 114 films released by 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate,
Paramount Pictures, Sony Columbia, Universal Pictures, The Walt Disney Studios and
Warner Brothers. That compares to16.7 percent of 2013 films from those major studios
that GLAAD deemed as LGBT-inclusive.
Of those lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender characters, 65 percent were men, about
a third were bisexual, 10 percent were lesbian, and none were obviously transgender,
according to GLAAD, originally known as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
GLAAD also found that:
There were 28 LGBT characters in all, up from 25 in 2013.
Six of the nine bisexual characters were women.
Racial diversity among the LGBT characters increased between 2013 and 2014, when
32.1 percent of them were of color. That’s up from 24 percent during the prior year.
Of those characters, 67.9 percent were white, 14.3 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander,
10.7 percent were black and 7.1 percent were Latino.
Comedies were the most LGBT-inclusive films, followed by animated and/family
films, then dramas, then sci-fi. No documentaries had LGBT characters.
Warner Brothers films were the most LGBT-inclusive of the analyzed 114 releases,
with such characters in seven of its 22, or 32 percent, releases. The runners-up were
Paramount, with 23 percent; Universal, with 21 percent; Fox, with 18 percent; Lionsgate,
with 12 percent; Disney, with 8 percent; and Sony, with 6 percent.
In its first-ever look at “art house” or “independent” films from four smaller subsidiaries
of the major studios—Focus Features, Fox Searchlight, Roadside Attractions
and Sony Pictures Classics—five of 47 releases were LGBT-inclusive. That’s 10.6 percent
of those 47 films.
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WOMEN’S MEDIA CENTER
The Status of Women in the U.S. Media 2015 TOC womensmediacenter.com