Women Directed Just 16% of 2024's Top 250 Grossing Movies
Women Directed Just 16% of 2024's Top 250 Grossing Movies
The number of female filmmakers working on Hollywood films was flat in 2024 despite buzzy releases like 'The Substance' and 'Babygirl,' study finds.
The number of female filmmakers working on Hollywood films was flat in 2024 despite buzzy releases like 'The Substance' and 'Babygirl,' study finds.
This happening despite "equity"-focused policies like DEI in corporate America surprises me. Something about the 2024 and 2025 film schedules seem a bit odd/thin, I wonder how much success women will have in 2026.
Do y'all think this is a marketing issue, or women not getting enough opportunities in Hollywood, or audiences rejecting female filmmakers?
Audiences want good movies, and often don't care who writes or directs them. It'd be a mistake to say the reason for the low percentage "is because sexism" on such a multifaceted situation. A quick web search says only about 15% of all filmmakers are women, so this statistic sounds about right. Either not enough women are interested, or not enough get the opportunity.
It is the first teo for sure, maybe the third.
We have the inertia of past directors being prinarily men. That means to pool of established directors that are likely to be picked for a bigger budget movie that will receive a ton of advertising will be men.
Second, even with DEI the culture of most cultures simply defers to tall men for the most part, even when it is subconcious. So a pitch for a movie will just end up leaning towards men on top of the ratio of available directors because the people funding movies are likely older men who have concious or inconcious biases.
I'm sure most people pay little attention to the director outside of well known names. The well known names tend to be men, because they have probably been making movies for a couple decades in the current environment. I'm sure there is a mix of people who are interested or turned away from a film if a woman is directing, but I have no idea how much of it is because it is a woman by iteself or because of being marketed as being directed by a woman. Barbie was a massive success, so it isn't like being directed by a woman is a complete dealbreaker, but while big budget action movies that dominate the box office are directed by men who have become houshold names the ratio will stay skewed.
Even if society leaned hard into DEI it would take decades to reach any semblance of balance.
Amongst people who talk about directors, I find that most of them 1) talk about startlingly few directors and 2) don't seem to mention female directors at all.
After seeing Barbie I wanted to see Lady Bird, but I didn't see a lot of videos talking about Gerta Gerwig as a director the way I see the same done for Christopher Nolan. Ofc the longer your career is the easier it is to do that, even if you're getting trashed over mediocre media.
How many women have made 6 or more full length feature films in their lifetimes?
afaik this 16% is far far better than it was a decade ago. DEI doesn’t really claim to be more than a palliative solution, so it’s only going to be expected that it will take some time before equity is reached, during which period things may vary and sway year to year.
Do y’all think this is a A) marketing issue, or women B) not getting enough opportunities in Hollywood, or C) audiences rejecting female filmmakers?
it’s certainly primarily a systemic issue as you suggest in B. marketing, A, might be a problem but i have no evidence for it. i find C to be the least likely. audiences anecdotally love women filmmakers.