Star Wars movies don’t have equal screentime for women (yet)

As much as we love the women of Star Wars, they haven’t even broken the equal screentime barrier, according to some new research.

How much would you say Leia is featured in Star Wars as a whole, particularly in the original trilogy? She’s always there, right? Or at least that’s how it feels when you think about the movies. Same thing with someone like Rey, who is basically the hero of the franchise going into the future. But memory’s a tricky thing, and it turns out that one professor, Becca Harrison, has actually sat down and tried to figure out how much women feature in all of the Star Wars films (excluding Solo, which is still in theaters and thus can’t quite be analyzed yet).

The closest any film comes to exactly 50 perfect equal screentime is The Last Jedi, which clocks in at 43 percent. Yes, even with the fact that Rey’s training under Luke Skywalker and meeting with Kylo Ren through the Force is a major plot point; even with the introduction of Rose Tico and Amilyn Holdo; even with Leia showing once and for all that Yoda had a good reason for wanting to train her (as shown in From a Certain Point of View); and even with Captain Phasma er … showing up for a big fight with Finn.

But Jyn Erso’s the main character of Rogue One, right? And since Mon Mothma appears, there’s another woman … but if you look on the cast list right on IMDb, you’d have to go to the full cast list just to find another woman. All of this means it ranks third, behind The Force Awakens and Last Jedi.

It’s sad that “all of this” seems so very small in comparison.

Here’s Harrison’s full list, and it gets even, well, smaller:

In her blog post, linked above, Harrison points out that “the quality of women’s representation” has “further things to be said.” While I don’t want to diminish her work, here are some of those things.

First, Harrison’s right in noting that women of color particularly need more representation. Rose Tico is great and important — but she shouldn’t stand alone. Nor should Val, who for spoilery reasons also deserves better.

Additionally, it’s possible to make a big impact with a small amount of time, as Leia does with the 15 percent of A New Hope that she gets. But it’s also possible to make a really terrible impact, as Harrison herself points out when referring to Padmé Amidala, much as we here think Padmé deserves better.

But all of these points are more like feelings. When we search them deeply, we know this to be true: the data doesn’t lie. All women need better from Star Wars, both in front of the camera and behind the camera.

Next: 20 pieces of trivia you need to know about Star Wars

How do these numbers affect your perception of Star Wars?