The Internet Movie Database has adopted a feminist film classification that was created to highlight the lack of women working in the film industry.
The F-rating was first introduced at the Bath Film Festival in the U.K. in 2014 by its director Holly Tarquini, and has since been brought into use by more than 40 cinemas and festivals across the country.
Now IMDb has taken up the rating, with 21,800 films written, directed or starring women — including the likes of Frozen, American Honey, Hidden Figures and recent British genre hit Under the Shadow — tagged.
“The F-Rating is a great way to highlight women on screen and behind the camera,” IMDb head Col Needham told the BBC.
Added Tarquini: “It’s exciting when new organizations decide to join us in shining a light both on the brilliant work women are doing in film and on how far the film industry lags behind most other industries when it comes to providing equal opportunities to women.”
Tarquini added that the “real goal” was to reach the stage where the F-rating was “redundant” because 50 percent of the films were being told by and were about women.
The F-rating doesn’t yet have a prominent position on individual film pages on the IMDb website, but can be found by typing “F-rated” in the search bar and found in the keywords.
