A lot has changed since 1985 – fashion, hair, politics, technology. But taking a look at the way in which women are represented in film, it seems that, for the most part, not much has changed at all. The best example to use here is The Breakfast Club – one of the most highly regarded films of that year, that decade, and that ‘coming of age’ genre in its entirety.

Written and directed by John Hughes, it seems, on the face of it, to be a film in which women might actually get a relatively fair crack of the whip. Of the main cast of five, two of the characters are female. The girls get screen time that seems equal to their male counterparts, and they have just as much opportunity to share their own stories. However, the sexism that seeps into this tale of personal exploration an...

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