Visualizing Gender Gap in Film Industry over the Past 100 Years

Abstract: Visualizing big data can provide valuable insights into social science research. In this project, we focused on visualizing the potential gender gap in the global film industry over the past 100 years. We profiled the differences both for the actors/actresses and male/female movie audiences and analyzed the IMDb data of the most popular 10,000 movies (the composition and importance of casts of different genders, the cooperation network of the actors/actresses, the movie genres, the movie descriptions, etc.) and audience ratings (the differences between male's and female's ratings). Findings suggest that the gender gap has been distinct in many aspects, but a recent trend is that this gap narrows down and women are gaining discursive power in the film industry. Our study presented rich data, vivid illustrations, and novel perspectives that can serve as the foundation for further studies on related topics and their social implications.