Is Hollywood’s Gender Gap Narrowing? : Commentary: Recent films with women as stars or in more compelling roles show that the industry may finally be addressing decades of underrepresentation.

In “The Net,” Sandra Bullock stars as a computer whiz whose online chattiness gets her mixed up with a hitman for an international espionage outfit. In “Dangerous Minds,” Michelle Pfeiffer plays an ex-Marine who uses her military training to whip an unruly class into shape in her new job as a high school teacher. In “Beyond Rangoon,” Patricia Arquette is a depressed doctor who, while vacationing in Southeast Asia, becomes politicized and leads some terrorized refugees through the jungles of Burma.

I hate those movies, but I love the fact that they were made. They represent one of the most hopeful trends in Hollywood: a marked increase in the percentage of mainstream pictures whose central characters are women, which offers the hope that the American film industry may finally close a gender gap that began four decades ago with the total submersion of our culture in television.

Did I say gap? It’s more of a chasm, a Grand Canyon-size gash that has made women--both in the movies and in the audiences--incidental to the interests of men. Before TV, the studios programmed for couples and families, and there were invariably as many actresses as actors on the annual exhibitors’ poll of the top 10 box-office attractions. But, scrambling to survive the TV invasion, Hollywood began to target movies for specific audiences--men mostly, because they were considered the decision-makers--and women were largely relegated to the role of companions, both onscreen and in the theaters.

In 1985, to pull a representative year from Hollywood’s worst decade, 73% of all major studio movies had men as their principal characters. Women were central in only 15%, and the remaining 12% were either ensemble films or love stories giving equal prominence to the genders. Through the first eight months of this year, the percentage of movies centered on female characters is about 25% and on men about 60%.

That’s hardly parity, but it’s a significant improvement, and it seems clear now that the gap began to close when Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis drove into it at the end of Ridley Scott’s “Thelma & Louise” four years ago.

“Thelma & Louise” was the surprise hit of 1991, and it prompted a vociferous debate between people who saw it as a breakthrough feminist film and those who thought of it as a routine buddy movie in drag. It seemed pretty routine to me, and it still does. But it was definitely a breakthrough film, not for the cause of feminists necessarily, but for women working in film and for all moviegoers fed up with a steady diet of beef.

My problem with “The Net,” “Dangerous Minds” and “Beyond Rangoon” is that they are victories in casting only. Bullock, Pfeiffer and Arquette are playing characters that have traditionally been male. That’s how the men running Hollywood have been reasoning while trying to exploit the huge audience that turned out for “Thelma & Louise.” “Say, we get it! All we have to do is put women in roles written for men, and we have a woman’s movie.”

So Sharon Stone plays the Babe With No Name in Sam Raimi’s “The Quick and the Dead,” a parody of those Clint Eastwood/Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns. Andie MacDowell, Drew Barrymore, Madeleine Stowe and Mary Stuart Masterson play a “Wild Bunch” of gunslinging chicks in “Bad Girls.” Lori Petty is a gender-bent Mad Max in “Tank Girl.” And Geena Davis, having been made a star by “Thelma & Louise,” does some Errol Flynn swashbuckling in husband Renny Harlin’s upcoming $80-million pirate adventure, “Cutthroat Island.”

My colleague Jennifer Krauss a few weeks ago pointed out the mixed blessing of Hollywood’s fresh interest in women. Yes, they’re becoming central characters, but often as predatory monsters. In “Species,” Canadian model Natasha Henstridge plays an in-vitro monster--half-human, half-who-the-hell-knows?--who breeds with men and kills them. In “Nine Months,” Hugh Grant fantasizes his wife (Julianne Moore) as a giant grasshopper who, once she gets her wish to become pregnant, will eat him.

The truth is that the most honest women’s movies are still the province of independent and foreign filmmakers. Three of my favorite pictures this year focus on women, but they come from New Zealand (“Once Were Warriors”), Australia (“Muriel’s Wedding”) and Ireland (“Circle of Friends”). And while it didn’t work for me, independent filmmaker Todd Haynes’ “Safe” has been this country’s most provocative portrait of a modern woman’s life in a long time.

But there is no question the studios are finding good reasons (money, money) to make more movies with women’s themes. “Something to Talk About,” “Boys on the Side” and “Clueless” have all found a sizable audience, and “While You Were Sleeping” is a smash hit.

However, what I take most of my optimism from is the increasing development of female characters in movies in which they may or may not be the central figures. “Rob Roy,” “The Bridges of Madison County” and “A Walk in the Clouds” all feature strong male leads--Liam Neeson, Clint Eastwood and Keanu Reeves--but the most compelling characters are the women in their lives, played by Jessica Lange, Meryl Streep and Spanish actress Aitana Sanchez-Gijon. And all these films have done well at the box office.

That’s the trend within the trend to watch. If movies like “The Net” and “Beyond Rangoon” help persuade Hollywood to spread its money around, fine. But after nearly a century of filmmaking, character is still the life force of quality movies, and in reducing the role of half the population, Hollywood has merely diminished its own resources.