Where Are the Women? Grandma

BASIC REPRESENTATION SCORE: +25

FEMALE AGENCY/POWER/AUTHORITY SCORE: +6

THE MALE GAZE SCORE: 0

[no issues]

GENDER/SEXUALITY SCORE: -4

WILDCARD SCORE: +5

Is there anything either positive or negative in the film’s representation of women not already accounted for here? (points will vary)

The film is overtly about an issue that impacts almost women in one way or another — access to abortion — that is almost entirely ignored on the big screen… and the film handles it in a way that is not politicized yet that also underscores its necessity if women are to be in control of their own lives.

TOTAL SCORE: +32

IS THE FILM’S DIRECTOR FEMALE? No (does not impact scoring)

IS THE FILM’S SCREENWRITER FEMALE? No (does not impact scoring)

BOTTOM LINE: This is the rare film with hardly any men onscreen, and the only significant two exist within the story as nothing but romantic and/or sexual adjuncts to women. Yet while they are less characters than representations of ideas, as female adjuncts to men often are, they represent men’s perspectives — in this case, two different ways that men react when the women they are sleeping with become pregnant — which is more than can be typically said about female adjuncts to men, who typically represent not their own perspectives but how men feel about them. So even though men are barely present in this story, they are still more present than in the vast majority of movies in which gender representation is swapped.