Women's Day comes again, so why not I talk about something else that's also related to females again? There's some test on the Internet that purportedly claimed to measure the gender bias and the representation of females in movies in general, which I'm sure some of you may have already heard about. I am, of course, talking about the Bechdel Test, named after Alison Bechdel and based on one of the strips from her comic series, Dykes to Watch Out For.

The rules are simple: it has at least two female characters (who are named); they both talk to each other; and whatever they were talking about is something that is not related to a man.

Sounds simple, right? Well, you'll be surprised to hear just how many movies actually failed this test.

Don't be alarmed, though. This test is not a definitive measure of feminism. Movies that fail that test may have failed because of factors unrelated to gender inequality in movies. In fact, a movie may even pass the test and still be sexist in nature, and a movie may fail the test but still has a strong female lead and/or feature quite a lot of female characters. In fact, a movie may even pass the test solely for just one single exchange said by two female characters to each other.

In short, the Bechdel Test is really just a tongue-in-cheek inaccurate test that only shows a rough representation of gender bias in movies in general. In reality, movies have always been pretty much a male-dominated medium, and it was only recently that we're seeing the rise of more and more strong female leads. The test was criticized for being a poor measure of gender bias that people really shouldn't take too seriously with. In fact, people are now suggesting that a different, much better, test should be used instead to better measure the representation of women in movies.

While writing this journal entry, I found out something interesting about Swedish cinema: Sweden now requires movies that pass the Bechdel Test to have that "A" certification sticker plastered onto such movies. It doesn't really mean that the movie is any good or bad; it's just a quick reference to inform moviegoers whether or not a movie even passes the Bechdel test. Since its implementation, Swedish movies that got the "A" certification skyrocketed from 30% up to 80% in recent years.