The Bechdel test is a measure of the representation of women in film and other fiction, asking whether a work features at least two women who have a conversation with each other about something other than a man. Cartoonist Alison Bechdel introduced the three-part rule in a 1985 strip of her comic Dykes to Watch Out For, crediting the idea to her friend Liz Wallace, who in turn drew on Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. Originally presented as a small joke in an alternative feminist newspaper, the test became a widely used, if informal, tool for examining gender representation in popular media during the 2000s. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Concept DomainFeminist film criticism 1 Formulated Year Domain
Domain (category) Connections
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Long-Form Articles
Sources
1. Bechdel test (Wikipedia)
Introduction (lead paragraph)
The test is named after the American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, in whose 1985 comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For the test first appeared.
Use in film and television industry section
The test moved into mainstream criticism in the 2010s and has been described as "the standard by which feminist critics judge television, movies, books, and other media".
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