M+E Daily

American TV viewers are increasingly watching and enjoying strong female characters, with a 39 percent growth rate in female representation among fan favourites since 2018. And a similar story is playing out in some European countries, with Spain seeing a 22 percent growth rate and Germany a huge 71 percent growth rate over the same period.

That’s according to a new study from Whip Media Group, which found that the prevalence of strong female roles is driving the surge, with an average of one third of viewers’ favourite female characters having supernatural abilities.

“As this year’s Women’s History Month comes to a close, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on this by tapping into the preferences of our TV Time community to see which female television characters have risen to the top and to understand how the entertainment industry is stepping up to change the representation of women in content,” the report — “Female Characters on the Rise” — reads. “As television becomes more and more of a staple in our culture, especially during the pandemic, we can’t help but look to characters as a way to not only escape our realities but to inspire our everyday lives.”

The study garnered insights from 16 million worldwide users of Whip Media’s TV Time consumer app, analysing the 50 most-popular characters among viewers in the U.S., Germany and Spain, to gauge representation of onscreen female characters. And that data does show Hollywood is taking gender representation seriously, with the percent of the top 50 characters who are female growing from 36 percent in 2018 to 50 percent through the first three months of 2021.

The European fan numbers were especially eye-popping: two-thirds of Spanish viewers’ top 50 favourite characters were female, up from 54 percent in 2018, and while German viewers only marked female characters as their favourite at a 34 percent clip in 2018, that stands at 58 percent today.

“Many of the female characters that are resonating with viewers today possess some kind of supernatural ability,” the report reads. “For example, the character of Wanda Maximoff from Disney+’s highly successful ‘WandaVision’ is the No. 1 most popular character in Spain, Germany and the U.S in 2021 thus far.”

One area Whip Media sees a need for improvement: there’s still a need for greater roles for women of colour.

To access the full report, click here.