Representation of Women Behind The Scenes In Film Still Needs to Improve

The opportunity gap is only widening in Hollywood. According to a 2022 study by USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, of 111 directors hired to make the 100 top-earning movies last year, only 9% were women. It’s a number that’s fluctuated over the years, from just 2.7% in 2007 to 1.9% in 2013 and reaching as high as 15% in 2020. This most recent number is down from the previous year, when 12.7% of directors of the year’s top-earning movies were women.

Women aren’t the only ones underrepresented among these directors, either: roughly 20% of the top-grossing films of 2022 were helmed by a director of color, and less than 3% of those directors were women of color.

“At the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, it seems that our tradition is to lament how little things have changed for women and people of color behind the camera in popular film,” said Dr. Stacy L. Smith, founder of the Inclusion Initiative. “We’d like to see not only the tradition change but also the hiring practices that continue to marginalize women and people of color as directors.”

Of course, these numbers shouldn’t overshadow the great work women directors did do this past year, including Chinonye Chukwu’s Till, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King, Maria Schrader’s She Said, and Sarah Polley’s Women Talking. It’s also worth mentioning that the study didn’t study movies released on streaming services and instead focused on theatrical releases.

Another recently published study offered a more optimistic perspective. Titled “The Celluloid Ceiling,” and conducted by Dr. Martha Lauzen, founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, the study interrogated 25 years of data and examined directors, cinematographers, writers, editors, and producers. The study found that in 1998, women accounted for 17% of the directors, producers, editors, writers, and cinematographers working on the top 250 grossing U.S. films. In 2022, women accounted for 24% of those titles. The number of female filmmakers rose from 9% to 18% over the 25-year-long period, female editors rose from 20% to 21%, female cinematographers rose from 4% to 7%, female editors rose from 13% to 19%, and female producers increased from 24% to 31%.

Though “The Celluloid Ceiling” illustrates a more optimistic shift than the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study, both studies depict an industry still dominated by men — specifically, white men. “Given the number of panels, research reports, and hand-wringing devoted to this issue over the last two and a half decades, one would expect more substantial gains,” Dr. Lauzen said in a January 3 statement. “It took the accumulation of over two decades of advocacy efforts, research reports, and an EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Coalition) investigation to double the percentage of women directors from 9% to 18%, and women are still dramatically underrepresented in that role. One can only imagine that it will take the same amount of effort to increase the numbers of women working in other positions, such as cinematographers and editors.”

Dr. Lauzen raises a troubling point: How much more hell can be raised before the industry begins to shift? One would think that in the wake of #MeToo or #OscarsSoWhite, two of the more potent social advocacy movements of the last decade, change in the industry would be more than just incremental — and, as we’ve seen over the last year, regressive.

So how can the industry change? A San Diego State University study found that hiring women directors often tends to result in productions with a higher percentage of female employees. On films with at least one woman director, women accounted for 53% of writers, 39% of editors, 19% of cinematographers, and 18% of composers. Conversely, those productions that were directed by singular male directors totaled 12% of writers, 19% of editors, 4% of cinematographers, and 6% of composers.

Ultimately, therefore, it starts at the top — with decisions made by studios. In 2022, Sony Pictures worked with just five women directors, which proved to be the most of any major studio. Universal Pictures hired two female directors, while Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, STX Entertainment, 20th Century, and Disney didn’t hire any female directors for their respective 2022 releases. If so many major studios are still so reluctant to employ female directors, our diversity of film, as well as our diversity of those who work in film, will remain frighteningly archaic.