The gender balance of the films was also recorded, and even those with big casts and female leads had them surrounded by male characters. The next biggest parts, sidekicks such as Flounder and Mushu, tended to be male.

Fought said: “There's one isolated princess trying to get someone to marry her, but there are no women doing any other things.

“There are no women leading the townspeople to go against the beast, no women bonding in the tavern together singing drinking songs, women giving each other directions, or women inventing things. Everybody who’s doing anything else, other than finding a husband in the movie, pretty much, is a male.”

These are only the initial findings concerning what these popular films teach young audiences about gender at impressionable ages, but previous studies have shown that animated films help children form their gender identities, and as Fought said, girls are “not born liking a pink dress. At some point we teach them. So a big question is where girls get their ideas about being girls.”

Eisenhauer offers that it's simply a reflection of culture, saying: “My best guess is that it's carelessness, because we're so trained to think that male is the norm. So when you want to add a shopkeeper, that shopkeeper is a man. Or you add a guard, that guard is a man. I think that's just really ingrained in our culture.”

Here's to more Meridas.

Images: Disney / Rex Features

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