In the wake of the ongoing, epic scandal involving Harvey Weinstein — and a growing number of men in positions of power — a haunting question has emerged. How many women were forced out of a business where they are already disproportionately outnumbered, and how many simply fled, out of fear of having additional sexual harassment or assault?

"It really hit us that there wasn’t rigorous data on the business itself," says Smith, whose team is interviewing dozens of executives while analyzing charts, song lyrics and music videos "in order to really understand and counter implicit and explicit bias," she says, aiming to release the initial findings in early 2018. Smith says that she hopes to create "targeted solutions" for both the live and recorded music sectors, such as encouraging music companies to put language into their employment contracts that incentivizes the promotion and retention of women and minorities in bigger roles. It’s an idea that borrows from Smith’s years of research on the film industry, in which "all an A-list financier has to stipulate [before funding a movie] are inclusion criteria," says Smith.

Brave aside, Pixar has only released two other stories with a female protagonist: Inside Out, a heartwarming feature about a girl coming to grips with her emotions, and Finding Dory, the blockbuster sequel to Finding Nemo. Yet Chapman is still the only woman who has ever directed a Pixar film, even partially. There are no women attached to any of the studio’s upcoming films, which include Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4—despite the fact that Lasseter himself directly addressed the studio’s lack of gender and racial parity back in 2015, promising that the studio was working on more films with “female and ethnic characters.”

“I was met with a wall of silence,” she told the Guardian. “People who were involved in the film were great, my friends and my family were amazing and very compassionate, but people in the industry didn’t want to know about it, they didn’t want to hear.”

Set in Afghanistan circa 2001, director Nora Twomey’s adaptation of Deborah Ellis’ best-selling novel is a somber, violence-wracked saga of discrimination and hardship, one that’s rooted in—and refuses to shy away from—Islamic misogyny. Far from light and frivolous, it’s a lament for the continuing persecution of women in a land beset by endless conflict, as well as a tribute to those valiant females, young and old alike, who refuse to reside quietly in the shadows. It’s also the best animated film of the year.

“I am not one to go for traditional female roles, because I don’t think traditionally female characters are very interesting, and I don’t think they represent real life,” said the actress. “I’m working hard to break free of stereotypes that the film industry has created and nurtured around women.”

The initiative, called Broadly Films, was announced by The Hollywood Reporter on Monday morning. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the multi-million dollar three-year project, funded by venture capital company AE Ventures, will assist 36 international filmmakers in funding, developing, and producing short films about "innovation, technology, youth, and women's issues."

“What I worry about is it’s going to turn off young artists to get into this industry. I can tell you that there are many times that I’ve wanted to get out of this industry because of the rape culture, because of the sexualization of women, and the lack of parity. Where I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s like pulling teeth, the amount that I have to prove myself.’”

“There is no argument that women have made a bold step forward this year in Hollywood,” said AAFCA president Gil Robertson. “The evidence demonstrated during the past year speaks for itself both in terms of box office and critical recognition by women, and we predict that there will be continued momentum going forward. We are also pleased that African American women are a part of this progress and are taking advantage of increased opportunities to make their cinematic imprint.”

“This dataset can be used to generate unbiased plausible stories from biased stories,” the team writes. “The main area where this can be extended is to train [algorithms] to identify which is a biased statement and which is not.” Machine learning algorithms could use the data to understand not only how often men and women appear in films, but the extent to which women may be cast in subordinate roles or underrepresented on movie posters.

In 1913, 26% of the cast in 53 films was female and of the 74 films made so far in 2017, the percentage is 28%.

"Women are still more likely than men to play “personal-life oriented roles,” like wives and mothers, while men are more likely to be defined by their occupations."