The lack of opportunities for women in Hollywood is disappointing, but isn’t really a surprise anymore. What may come as a surprise, however, is that the lack of a level playing field could be affecting the opportunities women seek. A recent study from the Black List, a hub where aspiring screenwriters can upload scripts for feedback, found that women only submitted about 29 percent of the scripts with self-reported gender demographics.

The Black List website allows any writer to upload a script for a monthly fee. Writers have the choice to reveal their demographic info as well as the option to purchase script evaluations (a rating of 1-10). According to the study, the organization considers itself “an equitable marketplace for writers to submit, focusing on the quality of the script alone” and is trying to find out why there is a noticeable gender gap in submissions.

Overall, the study found that women writers are more likely to adhere to self-imposed constraints and standards than their male counterparts. A “self-selection bias,” “where women choose not to pursue access to a given industry,” precludes women from trying their hand at screenwriting at all. Additionally, women trail behind men in the amount of money they invest in a script, number of scripts uploaded, and the amount of time they will keep a script on the site.

Finally, when the Black List surveyed a group of screenwriters, the study found that female and male responses were comparable. “They often had similar thresholds for ratings (7–8),” the report details, “and they often described similar processes for submitting.” The only major difference was that a significant number of female writers (and a few male writers) “felt that there was some implicit bias against women in competitions, even if it was blind.” As the report concluded, “This sentiment may also contribute to female writers’ own reluctance to submit at the same rate as male writers. Male writers never stated that they felt there was any implicit bias against male writers, so it’s likely that doesn’t affect their submissions.”

The main findings of the “Gender Gap in Non-Professional Writer Submissions” study are:

• Female writers host low-scoring scripts for far less time than male writers. This means that they’re less likely to invest in a worse performing script.
• Female writers tend to have more higher scoring scripts and fewer lower scoring scripts compared to men. This could mean female writers are better writers, but given that the number of entries is far lower, it’s more likely that female writers are simply more discriminating about submitting a script. Female writers likely only submit when a script is likely to score well.
• Female writers tend to feel that there is implicit bias against female writers and their writing. This may curb submissions by female writers.

Per the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film, 13 percent of 2016’s top 250 movies were written by women and 71 percent of scripted broadcast series in the 2015–16 season featured no women writers. Obviously, the industry isn’t very welcoming to women scribes and it appears aspiring writers are paying attention. The Black List’s gender gap appears to be collateral damage from the much broader, industry-wide gender disparity in Hollywood.

“Blond Ambition,” Elyse Hollander’s 2016 Black List-topping script about Madonna, was recently picked up by Universal. Also Hollander’s debut script, “Blond Ambition” is set in the early ’80s and follows Madonna as she works on her first album in New York.

Head over to the Black List’s site to read the complete study.