For women in Hollywood, 2015 was the year the industry’s abysmal gender gap made front-page news. High-profile actresses like Jennifer Lawrence spoke out against the pay gap, Geena Davis started her own film festival dedicated to promoting women and diversity in film, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission opened an investigation into gender discrimination in Hollywood.

But while the statistics remain dismal, the movies on screen demonstrated clearly that women’s stories are just as worthy—and lucrative—as men’s. In an industry traditionally dominated by men, this year has seen a (relative) abundance of movies made for women, about women, and even—in a few still-too-rare cases—by women. (This list highlights a few examples of the latter.) Four of the ten highest-grossing movies of the year featured female protagonists—still not equal, but up from just two in both 2013 and 2014. Inside Out introduced only the second-ever heroine in a Pixar movie, while indie darling Room transformed a horrific story of sexual abuse into a tale of love and recovery.

It’s not just that there were more movies about women; this year’s films pushed the boundaries of what we expect women to look like on screen, bringing to life new aspects of the female experience and asking questions of our cultural representation of women. Watching these movies was thrilling, but also sad; I realized what I had been missing all the years of watching primarily men’s stories on screen. From blockbusters like Magic Mike XXL to indie films like The Diary of a Teenage Girl, here are some of the scenes in 2015 that best captured a woman’s experience.

Suffragette: Radical solidarity.

Directed by Sarah Gavron

There’s a quiet moment in Suffragette, between the protests and hunger strikes, when Violet (Anne-Marie Duff), one of the most radical, committed activists, leaves the movement. She’s pregnant again. When she tells Maud (Carey Mulligan), whom she had brought into the group, Maud doesn’t ask Violet to stay. She simply gives her a hug. Movies about men’s political struggles are almost always focused on the sacrifices men make for their cause, but in this brief moment of female solidarity, we get a rare glimpse of the reverse: For women, sometimes the movement can’t be everything, no matter how much they believe in it.