TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

The Next Bechdel Test

1 pointsby andygcookover 7 years ago

1 comment

jmtsover 7 years ago
I would like to see such a set of metrics designed with a more statistical approach. The Bechdel test offers a simple but general metric for deciding whether a woman has played a non-superficial role in a movie. I think generality should be maintained in future tests, with a goal for a tendency toward equality across the industry, rather than equality within individual movies.<p>Take the term &#x27;50 percent&#x27; for example. If at least 50 percent of characters in a film must be female, then the target average across all movie characters is a female majority. While I&#x27;m not against movies with a female majority cast, there are also other films I would like to see that may have a male majority cast for historical reasons, that may not be net-negative toward women. War movies, perhaps.<p>Perhaps metrics should have weightings relative to the value of a given position. Approximate equality across crew still has significant value even if the cast is all-male.<p>Alternatively, rather than defining a metric in terms of some arbitrary definition of &#x27;equal&#x27; (which becomes increasingly difficult as you add more minorities), perhaps a more useful metric would be defined in terms of &#x27;away from unequal&#x27;. The Bechdel test already does this for female cast. Similar things can be done for crew. Similar things can even be done for the story.