What to Know About the Bechdel Test
By Clare Borchardt
If you’re an avid movie-goer, pop-culture connoisseur, or perhaps just a college student majoring in gender and women’s studies, you’ve likely heard of the Bechdel Test. Often regarded as a feminist assessment that exposes the male-dominated nature of Hollywood, the Bechdel Test requires a film to tick three simple boxes to pass:
1. Have at least two women in it
2. Have two women talk to each other in the film
3. Have that conversation be about something other than a man
Seems easy enough, right? Unfortunately, many well-known and award-winning films (an embarrassing number of them) don’t pass this test. This may be disappointing, but in 2024, it’s far from news. The Bechdel Test has existed since 1985, popularized by Alison Bechdel, hence its name, and people have been talking about its exposure of Hollywood’s male-dominated movies and movie sets ever since. Over the years, it has often been regarded as a way to quickly measure whether a movie puts some minimal effort into telling women’s stories alongside men’s. That’s why it’s a little jarring to see that nearly 40% of the thousands of major films cataloged on the official Bechdel website don’t pass.
But why is it so hard to pass a test that merely asks two women to have a conversation with each other about anything other than men? The male-dominated nature of Hollywood—or more specifically, the disproportionate number of men behind the camera—is partially to blame. This may seem like an obvious assertion, but the evidence is surprising all the same. As detailed in this insightful article, films with all-male writing teams are far more likely to fail the Bechdel Test than films whose writing teams had at least one woman. The fail rate decreases steadily with each additional woman writer, while films with writing teams composed entirely of women have a nearly nonexistent fail rate; overwhelmingly and easily, women writers pass the test.
People tend to write what they know
This might be explained by the simple psychological fact that people tend to write what they know—however subconsciously it is done—and the writers (and producers, and directors, and assistant directors…) in Hollywood are disproportionately men. And if male-dominated writing teams are prone to writing stories that focus on men, unfortunately for us gals, this sometimes means what they have to offer when it comes to writing women into their stories is…well, underwhelming. The Bechdel Test brings this to light.
However, though the Bechdel Test was one of the first official tests of its kind and forged the way for discourses about representation in film, it should be said that it has its faults. For the sake of boasting simple and easy-to-remember qualifications, the Bechdel Test sacrifices a great deal of nuance—for example, while some movies technically “pass” the Bechdel Test, they achieve the status so narrowly that it feels like a mistake. I mean, how are Goodfellas and American Pie 2 in the same category as Hidden Figures?
Inversely, some movies technically “fail” the Bechdel Test despite handling women’s stories more fairly than plenty of films that are Bechdel-approved. Take Gravity—the film follows an arguably badass, resourceful, resilient woman in the male-dominated field of STEM as she tries to survive a mission gone wrong in space. Despite this, the film doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test, because the lead never talks to another woman, let alone about something other than a man.
Raising the bar beyond the Bechdel Test
Furthermore, the requirements to pass haven’t changed since the test’s establishment in the ‘80s, and our current time comes with updated expectations of justice and equity. The bar set by the Bechdel Test 40 years ago is pretty low when examined by modern minds. The test does not take into account a film’s inclusion of complex characters of color, nor does it consider how many women are working behind the camera on any given film in roles such as direction and production. The Bechdel Test might have been a decent way to measure a film’s inclusivity back in the day—and it deserves its flowers for opening many eyes to glaring systemic issues in Hollywood—but it is by today’s standards a relatively weak set of qualifications.
To address this inadequacy, various individuals have proposed updated alternatives that build upon the precedent of the Bechdel Test while better examining how feminist—or in a broader sense, how generally inclusive—a movie is, both on and off the screen. Some examples include the DuVernay Test, Waithe Test, Pierce Test, and the Koeze-Dottle Test. This article by Lauren LeVine provides a very helpful and thorough explanation of these alternatives and more. In short, these newly proposed alternatives put more emphasis on the inclusion of women and people of color in Hollywood, be it in front of the camera or behind. They seek to encourage inclusion and representation beyond the bounds of what the Bechdel Test can achieve.
These kinds of “tests” put necessary pressure on those who have the power to amend long-standing issues of poor representation or an entire lack thereof. As film audiences continue to use their voices and demand improvement in the industry, it becomes increasingly difficult for Hollywood to justify and therefore continue its systemic and historical inequities. Though it may feel like the Bechdel Test and its successors are sometimes written off as trivial pop-culture frameworks, it should be remembered that these tests and their qualifications reflect the sentiments of the media-consuming public. They are a reminder to Hollywood: we want films that reflect the complex range of experiences, identities, and intersectionalities that come with being human. We want films about us.
