Last year, a study by The Pudding used data to confirm what anybody with a brain already suspected: In an industry where 85 percent of working screenwriters are men, male characters speak a whole lot more than female ones. Now, the site has approached a similar data set with more specific goals in mind. Instead of looking at dialogue, they set their sights on screen directions to see what words screenwriters use to describe the actions of both women and men.
Using 2,000 different scripts, the site’s researchers “broke down every screen direction mapped to the pronouns ‘he’ and ‘she.’” What they discovered is that, in the minds of the industry’s (primarily male) screenwriters, women are much more likely to “snuggle,” “giggle,” “squeal,” or “sob” as men “gallop,” “howl,” “strap,” “shoot,” and “kill.”