Women and girls around the world are being ill-served by portrayals of female leaders told from the male gaze, according to a new study released Tuesday, which the researchers say is the first global study of how women leaders are represented on-screen.

Female lead characters in major movies are more likely to be objectified, perpetuating harmful stereotypes for women and girls, the study found. These portrayals are tied to a lack of women working as directors, writers and producers, and in other behind-the-camera roles, the researchers argued.

The study, called Rewrite Her Story, is a collaboration between British-based humanitarian organization Plan International and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, founded by the actor Geena Davis, who has long advocated for more equitable representation of women on-screen.

The researchers reached their findings through technology called the Geena Davis Inclusion Quotient , a tool that uses facial and voice detection software to analyze female representation in movies and TV shows. The tool ran through the 56 highest-grossing movies released in 2018 in 20 countries, including the U.S., Canada, India, Japan, Germany, Peru and Senegal.

It found that the women portrayed in leadership positions were more likely to depicted as sexual objects or with nudity, compared with their male counterparts, representing how movies are often told from the male gaze.

Our most popular films are sending the message that leadership is primarily a male domain, the researchers wrote. Women leaders are subject to the male gaze and not really in charge.

Female leaders were more than four times as likely to be shown wearing revealing clothing 30% of them, versus only 7% of male leaders in the movies analyzed in the study.

The women in the 56 films were also almost twice more likely to be shown as partially nude than men (15% versus 8%), and four times more likely to appear completely naked on screen (2% versus 0.5% of male characters).

The study also found that the women portrayed in these movies were almost four times more likely to be sexually objectified for example, the camera focused on their body parts in slow motion and five times more likely to be sexually harassed than the men.

The studys key recommendation for making female leadership visible and normal and not objectifying women on-screen: Hire female filmmakers and champion their work.

These films show a world which is run by men, for men, the researchers wrote, pointing out that the filmmakers, too, are predominantly male.

Among the films that the researchers analyzed, none of them were directed by a woman, only a quarter of them had at least one female producer, and only 1 in 10 of them were written by at least one woman.

The studys findings are consistent with other studies that have shown the importance of women and girls being presented as leaders on-screen and the lack of women directing Hollywoods biggest movies .

Thanks in part to the Me Too movement, movie and television creators have slowly begun to scrutinize and be more mindful of the way women are portrayed, with some positive results.

For example, the recent box office hit Hustlers, written and directed by Lorene Scafaria and starring Constance Wu and Jennifer Lopez, follows a group of strippers who scammed their Wall Street clients after the 2008 financial crisis. It treats the women at its center with nuance, depicting their complicated relationships and motivations, rather than portraying them one-dimensionally, and the film avoids using a leering gaze when showing their bodies.

Similarly, the recent Netflix limited series Unbelievable, which documents several investigations into sexual assault, has earned praise for not sensationalizing the sexual assault incidents rather than focusing on the women at the center of the story.