Greta Gerwig’s Barbie may have been the top-grossing film of 2023, but women are still dramatically underrepresented behind the camera in Hollywood, according to two major studies of the industry.
At the same time, major studios that pledged to re-examine their diversity and inclusion practices in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 still fail to produce many films from people of color, according to USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. The center’s latest report, titled Inclusion in the Director’s Chair, called the entertainment industry’s pledges to promote inclusion “performative acts” and “not real steps towards fostering change”.
It is the second report in as many days to find that despite the outsized success of films directed by women in 2023, such as Barbie and Elizabeth Banks’s Cocaine Bear, studios are still not giving women the same opportunities behind the camera as their male counterparts. A study by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University found that women comprised just 16% of directors on the 250 top-grossing films in 2023, down from 18% in 2022.
The USC report found of a total 116 directors attached to the 100 top-grossing domestic films in 2023, just 14 of them, or 12.1%, were women. That’s an improvement from the 9% of top-grossing films directed by women in 2022, but the report argues that the percentage of female film-makers on top movies has not notably improved since 2018, when 4.5% of directors were women. Only 6% of the top-grossing fictional films between 2007 and 2023 were directed by women, the center found.
“Over more than a decade and a half, the percentage of women in top directing jobs has not even grown by 10 percentage points,” Dr Stacy L Smith, the USC report’s author and the Inclusion Initiative’s founder, said in a statement. “These figures are not merely data points on a chart. They represent real, talented women working to have sustainable careers in an industry that will not hire them into jobs they are qualified to hold solely because of their identity.”
The findings arrive even as women produced some of year’s buzziest films, such as Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, Celine Song’s Past Lives and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, and Gerwig became the first woman to direct a movie that grossed over a $1bn; pop stars such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé dominated the box office with films of their lucrative concerts.
But that critical and commercial success has not translated into significant change down the line. Overall, women accounted for 22% of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors and cinematographers working on the 250 top-grossing films, down from 24% in 2022, according to the San Diego State report. And 75% of the top-grossing films employed 10 or more men in key off-camera roles, while just 4% employed 10 or more women.
“It’s the ultimate illusion. Greta Gerwig’s well-deserved triumph belies the inequality that pervades the mainstream film industry,” said Dr Martha Lauzen, the report’s author. “The numbers tell the story. Behind-the-scenes gender ratios in Hollywood remain dramatically skewed in favor of men.”
The USC report also found no significant improvement in racial and ethnic diversity behind the camera. The number of directors from underrepresented groups for the top 100 grossing films of 2023 – 26, or 22.4% – was essentially stagnant from 2022, when it was 20.7%. Only four directors (3.4%) for the top 100 films in 2023 were women of color – Song, Adele Lim (Joy Ride), Fawn Veerasunthorn (Wish) and Nia DaCosta (The Marvels). That number was 1.4.% across the 17-year sample.
“This report offers a contrast to those who might celebrate the dawning of change in Hollywood after a year in which Barbie topped the box office,” concluded the USC study’s authors. “One film or one director are simply not enough to create the sea-change that is still needed behind the camera. Until studios, executives and producers alter the way they make decisions about who is qualified and available to work as a director on top-grossing films, there is little reason to believe that optimism is warranted.”
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