The Korean Film Commission has released the findings from a study on Korean movies released in 2017 — and the numbers show an obvious gender disparity on both sides of the camera. As Soompi reports, just 25.8 percent of last year’s commercial films featured a female lead. And only 8.4 percent were helmed by a woman.

The films analyzed either had a budget of 1 billion won (about $930,000 USD) or were shown on over 100 screens. The study focused on the number of female writers producers, and cinematographers as well as protagonists and directors. Per Screen Daily, 20.5 percent of films featured a female producer, 18.1 percent were women-written, and 4.8 percent had a female cinematographer.

This is the first time the Korean Film Commission has reported gender statistics.

“While the number of commercial feature films directed by women slightly increased in 2016 and 2017, there is not enough cumulative data to determine that this increase is significant,” the Korean Film Commission stated. “Female workers are impacted the most when there is a decrease in movie attendance or capital investment in the industry. Compared to 2016, the number of commercial films in 2017 increased, but the number of women participating in directing, producing, and writing decreased dramatically.” The Commission also mentioned that more research and longer-term analysis of the gender gap is necessary.

There may be less research available, but the gender representation in Korean film is comparable to that of the United States. Women accounted for eight percent of the directors on the top 100 films of 2017. They comprised 24 percent of producers, 10 percent of writers, and two percent of cinematographers. Research on the number of female-centric films in 2017 has not yet been published, but just 29 percent of protagonists from the top 100 films of 2016 were female.