Hanah Anderson and Matt Daniels analyzed the dialogue of 2000 films, counted how many lines each character had, and sorted them by gender and age. They present the data in interactive graphs. For example, they analyzed 30 Disney and Pixar films, and found that in 22 of the 30 movies, male characters had more lines. Even the dialogue of Frozen was 57% male. The movies ranged from 98% male dialogue (The Jungle Book) to 69% female (Sleeping Beauty).
There are outliers, like Mulan. Mulan is definitely the main character, but almost all the other characters are male, and Mushu has the most lines because fast-talking Eddie Murphy was the comic relief. Conversely, Tarzan was the lead character in Tarzan, but his fast-talking sidekick (Rosie O'Donnell) was female, and the movie had 55% female lines. Either way, the data shows that the overwhelming majority of lines go to male characters, both Disney and non-Disney.
The graphs that track lines by age and gender are not surprising. The age group of males that get the most lines in the 2,000 movies is 42-65, whereas the age group of women with the most lines is 22-31. There’s a lot more data to be seen in the article at Polygraph. You can look up individual movies; sort by data parameter, genre, or decade; or just check out the list. -via Metafilter