Older Women Are Finally Being Represented In Hollywood

The entertainment industry has neglected older women and fixated on female youth from the early days of classic Hollywood through to the 21st century. Past studies have shown that women entertainers’ careers peak at 30, while men’s peak over 15 years later. Fortunately, it seems like 2021 brought a ripple of change to this double standard, and 2022 could turn that ripple into a wave.

Women over 40 swept key categories at various awards shows in 2021. At the Emmys, Kate Winslet, 46, won Best Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series for her role in Mare of Easttown. Hannah Waddingham, 47, won Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, while Jean Smart, 70, won Best Actress in a Comedy Series for Hacks. Other Emmy winners included Gillian Anderson, 53, and Winslet’s Mare costar Julianne Nicholson, 50. At the Oscars, Frances McDormand, 64, took home the Best Actress award for her role in Nomadland, and Youn Yuh-jung, 74, won Best Supporting Actress for Minari.

This year promises to continue showcasing older women on the screen in meaningful ways. The Julian Fellowes-helmed period drama The Gilded Age, which drops on HBO Max this month, features Cynthia Nixon, 55, Carrie Coon, 40, and Christine Baranski, 69. The new year will also bring back several franchises with middle-aged female protagonists, including a new Downton Abbey movie and the next installment of the Halloween franchise. 2022 may even bring performances from relatively unknown actresses.

However, despite this progress, changing the tide of sexism and ageism in Hollywood remains an uphill battle. Though older people of any gender are represented less than young people on screen, statistics indicate that older men are still represented on screen more often than older women. A 2020 study by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University found that men experience only a 3% drop in representation for characters over 40, compared to 13% for women. For characters over 60, the representation is even slimmer: according to the same study, men over 60 made up 10% of characters while women 60 and over made up only 6% in 2020. A 2021 Nielsen report drove these findings home; while women over 50 make up 20% of the population, they are still only portrayed on television 8% of the time, and their stories often revolve around motherhood.

Reflecting on the significance of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University’s findings, executive director Martha Lauzen stated, “We see a handful of mature female actresses and assume that ageism has declined in Hollywood. But unless your last name happens to be Streep or McDormand, chances are you’re not working much in film.” She added that “the tendency to feature younger female characters in films emphasizes the value of their youth and appearance at the expense of allowing females to age into positions of personal and professional power.”

These disheartening statistics underscore the significance of nuanced portrayals of older women receiving high-profile awards in 2021. While Smart and Winslet played mothers in their respective projects, their characters were not defined exclusively by their relationships with their children. Both focused on their careers; Smart’s Deborah Vance intended to maintain her comedy-legend status while Winslet’s Mare Sheehan tried to crack several grisly cases as a small-town cop.

2021 also saw childless older women take center stage. Nomadland focused on Fern, played by McDormand, transitioning to a nomadic lifestyle, stripping all her possessions and hometown connections save for a camper van and her bare essentials. Rebecca, the frosty owner of Ted Lasso’s soccer team AFC Richmond, is a business-savvy woman with a blossoming, if imperfect, love life. Rebecca is never interrogated about not having kids, nor does the show imply her life is any less complete without them.

The role — played by Hannah Waddingham, an accomplished British theater actor — offered the actress her first major Hollywood role, and as Lauzen noted, it’s especially rare to see older women on screen who aren’t already established actresses. After Waddingham’s Emmy win, The Female Quotient, a business that advocates for gender equality in the workplace, posted to Instagram, “At 47-years-old, Hannah Waddingham is proving that success can be achieved at any age … Let’s all remember to rally around women who are pursuing their dreams throughout every phase of life.”

If 2022 falls short in older women’s representation, it’s at least clear that a greater sea change has begun that leaves hope for the future. “We are in the midst of a demographic revolution,” Dr. Susan J. Douglas, an author and professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan, told The New York Times. “There are more women over 50 than ever before in our society. And millions of them are not really ready or eager to be told to go away and obsess about their grandchildren without participating in and doing other things.”