TIFF 2014: Hollywood's silent women

Take a glance at the star lineup for the Toronto International Film Festival and youd be forgiven for assuming that Hollywoods leading ladies are a tremendously powerfullot, free to pick and choose from a plethora of meaty roles. But the reality for most actresses is far less glamorous.

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A recent study found that women represent just 30 per cent of all speaking characters in top movies the same proportion as American cinema inthe1940s.

Despite the major box office successof female-led films like Gravity, Maleficent andThe Hunger Games series, women made up just 15 per cent of protagonists in the top 100 movies last year.

Films with clear female leads are sprinkled across TIFFs galas and special presentations (like Reese Witherspoon in Wild; Kate Winslet in A Little Chaos and Xavier Dolans Mommy to name a few), but the vast majority of Hollywood productions at the festival are dominated by men.

Getting female stories to screen

TIFF's artistic director Cameron Bailey insists it's not for a lack of trying. Festival programmers makea concerted effort to bring female stories to screen.

"We've been paying a lot of attention to how women are represented and how women filmmakers represent their own storiesthe stories they want to tellin the last few years," he explained. "[But]we have noticed despite all the efforts that were made in past years . . .there hasn't been a significant amount of change."

As theauthor and founder of the industry website Women and Hollywood, Melissa Silversteinfights forgender parity across the entertainment business. But equality, she says, is a long way off with fewer than5 per cent of all studio movies in the past years ledbya female director.

"What is happeningis that the vision of women is missing,and this is a problem because we need to have the experiences of women in our theatres and on screen so we can all benefit from them."

• VIDEO| Hollywood's woman problem

In the above video, Silversteindescribes how Hollywood's relationship with theinternational market is contributing to the lack of femalestories.