Cinemas in Sweden to use ‘the Bechdel test’ to assess how women are portrayed in films.

To pass the test, a film must feature at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy, all the Star Wars films and all the Harry Potter films except one have failed the test, which was created in 1985 by American cartoonist Alison Bechdel.

Pulp Fiction and The Social Network have also failed and therefore not achieved an “A” rating.

Ellen Tejle, director of art-house cinema Bio Rio in Stockholm, said using the rating has been an “eye-opener” and will hopefully lead to “more female stories and perspectives on cinema screens”.

Along with four other Swedish cinemas, Bio Rio started using the rating last month to show how few films pass the Bechdel test.

Tejle believes that this failure is detrimental given how films influence perceptions of women.

As she pointed out, film goers rarely see “a female superhero or a female professor or person who makes it through exciting challenges and masters them”.

Like Bio Rio, Scandinavian TV channel Viasat Film will introduce the rating in its film reviews and will even host a “Super Sunday” event on 17 November, only showing films that pass the test.

The Hunger Games, The Iron Lady and Savages will be among the films shown.

Not everyone, however, supports the Bechdel test and its introduction in Swedish cinemas.

Swedish film critic Hynek Pallas considers the test to be useless.

“There are far too many films that pass the Bechdel test that don’t help at all in making society more equal or better, and lots of films that don’t pass the test but are fantastic at those things,” he said.

Others have criticised the test because it doesn’t account for the setting of a film, which may be in an all-male environment, or the fact that some films portray real life, which features sexism.

Despite the controversy, it is clear that sexism in Hollywood has long been an issue and does not seem to be getting any better.

A recent study by the USC Annenberg Center found that in 2012 less than a third of speaking characters in films were female and females accounted for less than 17 per cent of top directors, writers and producers.

The Annenberg Center also discovered that there have been twice as many male characters as females in films for at least six decades and female characters are twice as likely to be in sexual scenes.

Amy Bleakley, the lead author of the study, said: “Apparently Hollywood thinks that films with male characters will do better at the box office.

“It is also the case that most of the aspects of movie-making – writing, production, direction, and so on – are dominated by men, and so it is not a surprise that the stories we see are those that tend to revolve around men.”