Not very many Ms. Film Critics

If there was anyone surprised by the selection of two men to host the revamped TV show “At the Movies,” it probably wasn’t Martha M. Lauzen. The executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University issued a study this week that found that women are underemployed as movie reviewers at the nation’s 100 largest newspapers.

Examining 2,365 film reviews that appeared in those papers during a two-month period late last year, Lauzen found that 70% of them were written by men.

“Overall, these findings suggest that film criticism in this country’s newspapers is largely a male enterprise, echoing the predominance of men working on screen and behind the scenes in the film industry,” she wrote. “In short, men dominate the reviewing process of films primarily made by men featuring mostly males intended for a largely male audience. The underemployment of women film reviewers, actors and filmmakers perpetuates the nearly seamless dialogue among men in U.S. cinema.”