It doesn't, though. Taken by itself, nothing in the statement absolves anyone of anything, or even contains any kind of value statement beyond "empathy is good." You could just as well argue that not saying this lets men off the hook by not calling out the disparity.
But your whole chain of logic starts with the fundamental premise that women are more empathetic than men. Empathy is not a "you have it or you don't" trait. People can learn empathy. It might be true that in our society women (generally) are more empathetic than men, but it's not a static state of things. Ebert once referred to movies as "a machine that generates empathy". If men find it challenging to empathize with a woman, I'd rather film/art/media tackle that head-on rather than accepting it as "just the way things are". Maybe women are more empathetic than men because they are more constantly being asked to sympathize with an "other"--ie a protagonist who is not like them. Maybe the problem is that boys need more practice with this.
Obviously, there's no way to know for sure, but a lack of interest from female consumers seems a lot likelier and simpler than some kind of internalized misogyny, or some systemic bias they themselves aren't aware of. That would be putting the "blame" on women as much as any other explanation, since it's basically positing a mild form of brainwashing.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "lack of interest", though. Women turn up for films that cater to their interests. The crowd at the showing of
Wonder Woman that I attended had a much higher proportion of women than any other superhero film I've ever seen in the theater.
And even if we suppose that many or even most women don't care for action films or don't particularly care about a female lead in one, there are millions and millions of women in the US alone. If even 10% of women are interested in seeing a female lead, then it's a marketable strategy to make some films this way.
It's dangerous to assume that the lack of a product means that consumers aren't being vocal enough. Many parents will tell you that books with characters who are demographically (race, age, ethnicity, gender, etc) like their children are important. But despite some very recent strides, most children's books are not very diverse. It's not a lack of interest, it's not a lack of willingness to invest in such a product. It's that the industry itself is set up in such a way that impact the output in a skewed way. Movies are no different. After Michael B Jordan was cast in the
Fantastic Four movie, Josh Trank wanted to cast a Black actress as his sister. He uses the phrase "heavy pushback" to describe the studio's reaction. The studio wasn't pushing back on a specific actress, they were pushing back on the *idea* of casting someone in that demographic.
There are always market opportunities people aren't hip to yet, but they're harder to find over time, and as time goes on the idea that there's a massive market opportunity for a demographic that makes up half of all people in a major industry that's already got billions of dollars sloshing around it...that's a pretty stark claim. Certainly a lot tougher to believe (and a lot more complicated) than the idea that they maybe just don't care about it much.
So I wasn't entirely sure which superhero films would be considered comparable, thus I'm comparing
Wonder Woman and
Captain America (both a first entry, they have roughly comparable numbers of IMDb ratings). For
Captain America women make up almost exactly 1/5 of the ratings. For
Wonder Woman, they make up about 1/4. Did
Wonder Woman drive away men who weren't interested in a female protagonist? Maybe. But did it attract female consumers who might not have otherwise watched a superhero film? Yes.
I'm not saying "women led action movies" is a subgenre that is an untapped billion dollar profit just waiting to be exploited. But I do think that there is a market for them.
Honestly, it's taken the film industry a while to tap into the "girls get horny too?!" market (with films like
Magic Mike and
50 Shades).
I've gotta object pretty strenuously to this comparison, because most women are not experts in health. They are, however, presumably experts in what they like. Women consumers are in a position to demand art and entertainment they prefer in a way in a way that has no correspondence to health care. And that's without even getting into the regulatory side.
And how do you imagine women demanding such art? Take one of my students: she's 11 years old, Black, girl, athletic. She would love to see someone who looks like her in a superhero movie. How does she make this happen? By NOT watching other superhero films? Nah, she loves superhero films! So what is her recourse?
I agree with films being aspirational, though that can be bad, too, when depictions are unrealistic in certain ways, or because the defense of art as "reflecting truth" is inevitably weakened when the truth its reflecting is a value judgment or desire about what things ought to look like (and that "reflecting truth" bit gets tricky when someone is both generally true and a known stereotype). It all has a place in cinema in some form, though.
But most action films are, by any metric, unrealistic. Again: if a male action star can fire a machine gun while ziplining out of an exploding building, get knocked flat by an explosion but not suffer any injuries beyond superficial bruising, and then take on 8 bad guys in hand-to-hand combat, we don't worry that little boys will think they can zipline out of burning buildings, do we? Most action films reflect an unrealistic aspiration for male characters.
"But girls will grow up thinking they can be stronger than boys!!". Meh. I have a lot of male students who watch sports and read books about sports. When the guidance counselor asks boys in my class what they want to be when they grow up, a solid HALF of them answer "NFL player." Even if you only look at athletes in the NCAA, only 2% of them even go pro (and specifically in football the numbers are lower, 1.6%). It's not about girls thinking they can grow up to be stronger than boys. It's about thinking they can grow up to be strong and stand up for what is right, which is the same message I would hope boys take away from action movies. This is where what is literally on screen (Scott Adkins backflips and kicks two bad guys in the face simultaneously; Gina Carano punches out a man) co-exists with the bigger theme (standing up to corruption; protecting someone who is helpless). We all just pretend to believe the former; we're supposed to walk away with the latter.
Strong agree re: choice and opportunity. One of the reasons I asked that hypothetical earlier is that I believe, pretty confidently, that more equal societies will still see huge disparities in choice of profession, entertainment, and other things like that.
"Huge" disparities? Hmm. I mean, it seems to me that as fewer barriers stand in the way of different professions we tend to see smaller disparities. More women in the military, more men in primary education, more women directing movies, more men working as nurses.
I'm sure that some disparities will still linger, but I can't think of a profession that has gotten more skewed in the last 40 years. But maybe you are thinking of certain specific counter-examples. None of the women I've known in the military signed up to prove some sort of "girl power" point.
I can dig up the links if anyone cares, but I remember some interesting social research to this effect, where some Scandinavian nations known for their ostensible equality actually saw stronger gender preferences than less equal ones, seemingly because in equitable societies people feel more comfortable embracing those differences, rather than counteracting them to achieve some proportionality in areas they don't care about as much.
I believe it. I think that there's sort of a slingshot effect that happens. For example, take women staying at home to care for children. It's not cool when that becomes the default--"You are a woman, therefore you will give up your job to stay home". Then you see pushback. But that kind of strands women who do want to stay home and care for their children--because they might feel like a "traitor" for having that feeling. In a more open society, women would feel comfortable saying "I want to stay home with my kids and it's more important to me than continuing my former career". But I would also argue that in that same society you'd also see more men staying home with the kids. I have a few male friends who are the stay-at-home parent (usually because their partner's job has a higher salary), and they get comments and push back quite frequently because that's not a "man's job" and their wives get a ton of comments about whether or not it's "safe" to leave the kids with the dad.