2017 brought us the Women’s March and #MeToo but, as new research shows, there’s still a long, long way to go when it comes to gender equality in the film world. Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative’s latest “Inclusion in the Director’s Chair?” report reveals that the number of female directors on popular films is still stuck at that damn four percent — and things are much worse for women of color.

The study — which examined the gender, race, and age of the 1,223 directors of the top-grossing 1,100 films from 2007 to 2017 — found that “for female, Black, and Asian directors, there has been no meaningful change in over a decade and the doors to Hollywood remain mostly closed.” Just seven of those 1,223 directors were women of color: four Black women, two Asian, and one Latina.

Let that sink in for a moment. Eleven years. Only seven women of color. It’s infuriating.

Smith and her team also published information about the gender breakdown of film executives and Boards from seven major media companies — aka the people who decide what movies get to be made and whose stories get to be told. The report found that men hold 82.1 percent of C-suite jobs and only four C-suite positions are held by women of color. Women represent about 19 percent of Board of Directors positions, about 24 percent of President and Chief titles, and 41 percent of all EVPs, SVPs, and VPs.

Clearly the problem is up and down the industry. The entire system is broken and it will take a lot of reform if these stats are ever going to budge. The people behind Time’s Up need to focus on the lack of opportunities for women at the highest levels of the business. Part of cleaning house means commitments to hiring women, particularly women of color, or else 2017's reckoning will be for naught. Every institution across the board must make a public commitment to increasing women — and they must be held to it.

Bottom line: If the powers that be in Hollywood want to see significant change, they need to hire more women and people of color immediately.

Here’s hoping that will happen before the next “Inclusion in the Director’s Chair?” study is published. The report’s highlights are broken down by topic below. Read the entire study here.

Gender:

• Across 11 years and 1,100 movies, 96 percent of all directors were male and four percent were female. This translates to 22 male directors hired to every 1 female director.
• Only four Black female directors, two Asian female directors, and 1 Latina were hired to direct across 1,100 popular movies.
• Male directors start their careers earlier (20s) than female directors and some continue working into their 70s and 80s. The latter is not the case for women directors.

• The “one and done” phenomenon is far more likely for females than males. Most directors only worked one time across the 11-year sample, but pronounced gender differences emerged. Fifty-five percent of the male directors only helmed one film whereas 84 percent of the female directors did.

Race:

• In total, 5.2 percent of all directors were Black or African American. This represents no meaningful change over the 11 years studied.
• Only 3.2 percent of all directors were Asian. Across the 11-year sample, there has been no meaningful change over time.

• Eighty-one percent of the films with a Black director also had a Black actor attached as one of the two top-billed talent. This finding suggests that the vast majority of directing opportunities for Black directors are linked to the race of the story’s leading characters.

Corporate Decision Makers:

• A full 82.1 percent of prestigious C-suite jobs were held by males and only 17.9 percent by females. Among these women, only four were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups.
• Focusing on Boards of Directors, 18.8 percent of seats were filled by women and only three of these females were underrepresented.
• Among the executive film teams, only two of the chairs (25 percent) across the major media companies evaluated were women.
• Females filled almost a quarter (23.9 percent) of the President and Chief positions on executive film teams and roughly 41.2 percent of all EVPs, SVPs, and VPs. While the latter findings are encouraging, few women are holding the keys to the most powerful executive positions in Hollywood.

Domestic Distribution:

• Across the 11-year sample, a total of 997 (90.6 percent) of the 1,100 movies were distributed by seven major media companies.
• Of those 997 films, the company with the highest number of female directed movies was Warner Bros. Pictures (12 movies) and the lowest were Paramount (three movies) and Lionsgate (three movies).
• Films with Black directors were most likely to be distributed by Lionsgate, where 15 of the 18 movies were helmed by Tyler Perry.
• Walt Disney Studios has not attached a Black director to any of their top-grossing films in the sample.
• Universal Pictures was the most likely to distribute a movie with an Asian director (13 films) and Lionsgate was the least likely (one film).

Portions of this post were originally tweeted by Melissa Silverstein. Follow her @melsil.