This TED Talk features media researcher Stacey Smith, recorded live at TED Women, 2016.

Today, I want to tell you about a pressing social issue.

Now, it's not nuclear arms.

It's not immigration, and it's not malaria.

I'm here to talk about movies.

Now, in all seriousness, movies are actually really important.

In film, we can be wildly entertained, and we can also be transported through storytelling.

Storytelling is so important. Stories tell us what society's value, they offer us lessons, and they share

and preserve our history.

Stories are amazing.

But stories don't give everyone the same opportunity to appear within them, particularly not stories compartmentalized in the form of American movies.

In film, interestingly enough, females are still erased and marginalized in a lot of our stories.

And I learned this for the first time about 10 years ago when I did my first study on gender role and G-rated films.

Since then, we've conducted more than 30 investigations. My team is tired,

and I've committed my life as researcher and activist to fighting the inclusion crisis in Hollywood.

So today, what I'd like to do is tell you about that crisis. I want to talk about gender inequality in film. I want to tell you how it is perpetuated, and then I'm going to tell you how we're going to fix it. However, one caveat before I begin, my data are really depressing. So I want to apologize in advance because I'm going to put you all

in a really bad mood. But I'm going to bring it up at the end and I'm going to present a silver

lining to fix this mess that we've been in for a very, very long time.

So, let's start with the gravity of the situation.

Each year, my research team examines the top 100 grossing films in the United States.

What we do is we look at every speaking or named character on screen.

Now, to count in one of my investigations, all a character has to do is say one word.

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