Research
Study: 16.3% of European Theatrical Releases Directed by Women
The numbers for women in the American film industry are dire: Female filmmakers made less than 5% of studio pictures and just 10% of indie features from 2009–13. Things are a bit better for...
Study: Adult Women Are the Biggest Demo in Gaming
The gaming world is infamously unwelcoming towards female gamers, but it turns out that rampant misogyny in video-game culture hasn’t kept women away from their consoles. A new study shows that...
16% is Not a Win: Parsing the DGA’s Latest Stats on Women and Minority Directors in TV
“Female TV directors make gains,” proclaimed mainstream headlines following the DGA’s release yesterday of a report on female and minority directors in TV. If this is progress for women, color...
Study: An Epidemic of Invisibility Afflicts Female, Racially Diverse, LGBT Characters
A new study from USC has found that Hollywood is failing pretty much anyone who isn’t a straight white man. A 700-film, 30,000-character study was undertaken by USC’s Media, Diversity, &...
Women in Animation Offers Dismal Stats on Current State of Affairs, Proposes Paths toward Progress
Film and television aimed at families and children routinely underrepresent girls and women. According to the Geena Davis Institute, movies and TV shows for those demos feature on average three male...
Sexism in Theatre Infographic: Women Fill 9% of Sound Jobs, Underrepresented in Most Design Fields
In our Spring 2015 theatre preview, Shoshana Greenberg wrote that “Broadwaycan be a disheartening place for women. Too few are represented as writers anddirectors, and women’s stories don’t...
New Research from Women’s Media Center Concludes “Media On All Platforms Are Failing Women”
The Women’s Media Center has released their annual report tracking the status of women in both entertainment and the news. We’re feeling more optimistic about the future of women in Hollywood...
New Study Charts the “Post-Festival Chasm” for Women Directors
After becoming the first black woman filmmaker to win the Best Director prize at the Sundance Film Festival (for her second narrative feature “Middle of Nowhere”), Ava DuVernay waited for people...
Study: How Much Older Are Male Leads in Romantic Films than Their Female Co-Stars?
Last week, Oscar-nominated actress Maggie Gyllenhaal revealed that, by Hollywood standards, she was “too old” to play the on-screen love interest of a 55-year-old man. She’s 37. Following...
Queer Women Out of the Picture in 2014 Films
Damn, Hollywood, what is it going to take to finally give us some hot girl-on-girl action? Oh, so now I have your attention? Well, then what I really want to ask is, what will it take to finally...
Female Filmmakers Initiative Research Confirms Hollywood Is Stuck in a Sexist Rut
The big Hollywood studios are all in Las Vegas this week, showing off their upcoming summer films to the theatre owners at CinemaCon. Clearly, gender is on their mind, since John Fithian, the head...
2014 VIDA Count: Harper’s and The New Republic Make Gains in Women’s Bylines, Others Slide Backward
The 2014 VIDA Count is out, and the larger picture is mixed as usual. Women writers continue to lag behind their male counterparts as both literary reviewers and reviewees, and nearly all the...
Study: Female Characters Are Trapped Under Professional Glass Ceilings in the Movies
Back in February, Dr. Martha Lauzen observed in her annual Celluloid Ceiling Report that male characters are nearly twice as likely (61%) to be identified with a profession than their female...
Study: Women Made up the Majority of Moviegoers in 2014
It’s broken-record time again. For the 5th year ina row, women made up the majority of moviegoers in US and Canada in 2014, according to newresearch released by the MPAA. Women also purchased 50%...
WGA Study: Declines for Female and Minority TV Writers “Across the Board”
Over the last three years, the employment of women and minority TV writers has suffered a sharp fall. According to a WGA-West study comparing the 2011–12 and 2013–14 TV seasons, writers rooms...
Crosspost: Study Shows Female-Led Films Bring Greater Return on Investment
The following is cross-posted from The Black List with permission. Some edits have been made for clarification purposes. It seems both in practice and belief that producers and executives are...
Study: Diverse Movies and TV Shows Earn More Money and Attract More Viewers
If you’re reading this site, chances are good you’ve heard of “Empire,” the new FOX drama that has increased its audience every single week since its series premiere seven weeks ago. There...
Study: Female Protagonists Continue to Disappear From Film
2014’s most popular release was the female-led “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1,” a film that boasts not only a teen-girl protagonist, but also counts among its prominent...
USC Annenberg to Issue Report Cards Grading the Entertainment Industry on Diversity
In the aftermath of #OscarsSoWhite, the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism is launching an initiative aimed at improving diversity across the entertainment industry. The...
Cross-Post: A Solution to Gender Inequality in Film — Just Add 5 Female Characters Onscreen
Each year, my Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative assessesthe gender of all speaking characters (those saying one or more words onscreen) across the 100 top-grossing films. In 2013, only...
Guest Post: Only 26% of UK Film Crews Are Female — Which is Better than in the US
Earlier this year, I published a report into what percentage of crews on the top-grossing US films of the past 20 years are women. I found that, on average, women made up only 23% of a typical film...
Women Created Only 20% of TV Shows Last Season
The current narrative in the media zeitgeist is that TV is so much better for women than film. Well, it might seem so on the surface, because you see more women on our TV screens, but when you drill...
New Research Shows a Six-Year Low for Women Directors, 98% of Films Feature More Male than Female Characters
When I started the site nearly seven(!) years ago, research on women onscreen and behind the scenes was sparse. The good news is that, today, studies on this subject arrive regularly from all types...
Tina Fey’s Mean Girls Had The Most Women on a Crew in the Last 20 Years
We here at Women and Hollywood are always interested in new data that reveals where women stand in the film industry. Today, Stephen Follows, a producer and writer in the UK, released a new study...
Directors UK: Women Represent Only 14% of the Directors in UK TV
According to a new report from Directors UK entitled Who’s Calling the Shots?, women in the UK are directing only 14% of the TV shows. Weirdly, or not so weirdly, those stats exactly match the...
Female Protagonists Underrepresented Onscreen Five to One
Remember last week when we were all so happy about what Cate Blanchett said at the Oscars? Well, no matter how much money women make, there was almost five male protagonists for every female one...
UCLA Releases Scathing Report on Diversity in Film and TV
Just when you thought it was safe to be hopeful again, here comes another reality check. The Bunche Center at UCLA has released its annual “Hollywood Diversity Report” to remind us that we’re...
No Meaningful Change Over Time in Female Filmmaker Participation at the Sundance Film Festival Among New Research Released Today at Sundance
This morning, Women in Film and the Sundance Institute released the next stage of research on female filmmakers. Last year they released an unprecedented first phase in the work that began the...
Guest Post: We Want More Female-Written Plays! by Katherine Bowman
The Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative (LA FPI) recently conducted a study on the number of female-written plays produced in LA. The number is a disappointing yet unsurprising 20%. In...
Only One African American Woman Directed a Top Grossing Film in 2008
When you see these numbers it shows the difficult road women of color directors have ahead of them, but at least we have some numbers to looks at. Dr. Stacy Smith and Marc Choueiti recently released...
New Research: Females Are of Lesser Value Than Males
New research from Stacy Smith and Marc Choueiti of USC’s Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism has tracked women on screen and behind the scenes in the top 100 grossing films...
Research Alert: Changing the Status Quo — Industry Leaders’ Perceptions of Gender in Family Films
Anyone who has been to a G, PG, or PG-13 (and of course R rated films but they are not included in this study) knows that when they look up on the screen there are many more male characters than...