New Knowledge on Topic:

                Now that I've finally honed in on exactly what I want to research, I was able to find a lot of different articles and writing on the female role in film. I read a scholarly "Conference" written in 2008 on gender stereotypes in popular film and tv. I knew going in that I would already have a good idea about everything they were saying. It started with information about the current state of gender inequality and went on to say "In fact, research on television reveals that the participation of women writers and producers increases the percentage of females on screen."(Smith) I honestly didn't need to be told that 'research' proved his to know that it's true, but as I read further I discovered things that I hadn't known. "Females are more likely than males to be depicted as parents (52.2% vs. 40.4%) and in a committed relationship (59.9% vs. 47.4%) in motion pictures."(Smith) Though this is something that can be assumed, it's interesting to see numbers attached. Another study said that "Females were over five times as likely as males to be shown in sexually revealing clothing, which was defined as attire that enhances, exaggerates, or calls attention to any part of the body from neck to knees."(Smith)
As I searched for more material on it, I found an article on Newstatesmen.com entitled 'I hate Strong Female Characters'. Reading on, I found that this journalist, who happened to be a women, had some interesting ideas about modern concepts of female strength. She wrote "We need get away from the idea that sexism in fiction can be tackled by reliance on depiction of a single personality type, that you just need to write one female character per story right and you’ve done enough."(McDougall) I think this is a way of confronting contemporary falsehoods that plague film and other industries. Reading this helped inform me about a lot of new movies coming out where gender ratios are wildly unequal and female roles are being written in a way that for a women to be "strong", she must in some way emulate a man.

(Smith): http://www.seejane.org/downloads/GDIGM_Gender_Stereotypes.pdf
(McDougall): http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/08/i-hate-strong-female-characters