Getting beyond the Bechdel Test

THOUGH she was hardly the first person to pick up on the lack of well developed roles for women in film, Alison Bechdel was instrumental in generating much needed debate and discussion around the issue.

First voiced in 1985 by a shrewd female character in Bechdel’s comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, what has since become known as the Bechdel Test requires that a film features two female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.

In the cartoon, the unnamed character who explains the rule to her companion appears understandably aggrieved as they stroll past one film poster after the next, each one dominated by the muscular shape of a forbidding male action hero.