Women were the stars of some of this year’s biggest blockbusters, from the musical “Wicked” to the horror sequel “Smile 2.” But representation for women behind the scenes still lags far behind that of men.
The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University recently published its annual “Celluloid Ceiling” report, which broke down the numbers behind the casts and crews of 2024’s top-grossing movies. According to researchers involved with the study, who have been tracking gender representation in Hollywood for nearly 30 years, women accounted for only 16% of the directors who worked on the top 250 films of last year – the same percentage from the previous year. When they zoomed in to look at the top 100 films though, representation for women directors decreased, dipping from 14% in 2023 to 11% last year.
More troubling, still: Overall, only 8% of all behind-the-scenes roles were occupied by 10 or more women in last year’s biggest movies — while 70% of those films employed 10 or more men.
Researchers point out that even the depictions of powerful women in last year’s films were noticeably problematic, pointing to films such as Netflix rom-com “A Family Affair,” in which Nicole Kidman plays an author, and action/comedy “The Fall Guy,” featuring Emily Blunt as a camerawoman. In these and other films, “fictional female helmers needed to be saved, required help translating their direction for a male actor who literally spoke a different language, or were rendered so brittle by thoughts of future opportunities that they were perceived as being difficult to work with,” researchers wrote in the report.
“Every one of the portrayals provided a Rorschach test of how we view women in leadership positions,” they added.
This data aligns with previous research which also revealed an ongoing lack of women working in Hollywood. Data published by USC Annenberg’s Inclusion Initiative in early 2024 revealed that women directed just 14 of the 100 top-grossing U.S. films released in 2023 — and four of them were women of color. Female representation in front of the camera lags behind men, too. Previous data from San Diego State researchers found that a staggering 77% of the 100 top-grossing movies of 2023 had more men in speaking roles than women, while only 18% had more women in speaking roles than men. (Just 5% of movies had equal gender representation on-screen.)
One possible, if obvious solution to this ongoing trend involves putting more women in charge – leaders who are more likely to, in turn, hire more women across the board. San Diego State’s latest report found that films with a female director “employed substantially more women” in significant behind-the-camera roles such as writers, editors and cinematographers, than films with male directors.
That said, the news wasn’t all bad – women accounted for 20% of writers working on 2024’s 250 top-grossing films, the report noted, marking a 7% increase since the study was first conducted in 1998 — an historic high for representation, researchers stated.
Still, more work and more progress is needed. As history-making director Kathryn Bigelow once told Time Magazine, “Gender discrimination stigmatizes our entire industry. Change is essential. Gender-neutral hiring is essential.”
