The Hollywood industry still registers very low percentages of hiring female directors and women in production teams.
Beyond the efforts to make the problem visible and the tremendous cultural success that the filmmaker caused Greta Gerwig with “Barbie” last year, which made it the highest-grossing film in history directed by a woman, the Hollywood industry still records very low percentages of hiring female directorsaccording to data provided by two studies carried out by American universities.
According to the specialized site IndieWire, the first of the statistics, the Celluloid Ceiling (“Celluloid Ceiling”, in Spanish) of the University of San Diego, pointed out in its 26th edition that despite the fact that the film starring Margot Robbie was the undisputed number 1 in the box-office rankings, “female filmmakers are dramatically underrepresented” in the field, occupying only 16% of the 250 highest-grossing films and 14% of the hundred highest-grossing films.
“It’s the ultimate mirage. Gerwig’s well-deserved triumph contradicts the gender inequality that permeates the conventional and mainstream film industry“, specified the aforementioned analysis, which also concluded that the group of women directors, scriptwriters, producers, editors and directors of photography represent 22% of the teams in the main projects, with a decrease of two points in relation to the evaluation of 2022.
Only 4% of top-grossing films hired 10 or more women
The Celluloid Ceiling also revealed that 75% of the highest-grossing films released in 2023 employed more than 10 men in those same roles, and that only 4% hired 10 or more women for their roster; a fact that contrasts with those films headed by female directors, in which a considerably greater presence of women was recorded: 61% of scriptwriters, 35% of editors, 10% of directors of photography and 26% of musical composers.
For its part, the study on inclusion in the management role that the School of Communication and Journalism of the University of Southern California has carried out annually for 17 years assured that women were in creative control in 6% of the most successful productions.
Furthermore, within this limited index, only four of them are not white: they are Celina Song with “Past Lives”, Adele Lim with “Crazy women in trouble”, Fawn Veerasunthorn with “Wish: The Power of Wishes” -Disney’s proposal for its 100 years of history- and Nia DaCosta with “The Marvels”the latest installment of that popular superhero cinematic universe.
Meanwhile, the work focuses on the role of the studios, with Universal Pictures positioning itself as the one that hired the most women in the last 17 years, although there are only four; followed by Lionsgate, with three, and Walt Disney Studios with two.
“Major distributors are having difficulty green-lighting films with women and people of color in directing roles. This report shows a contrast between those who celebrate the advent of change in Hollywood after a year in which ‘Barbie’ triumphed at the box office. One film or one director is simply not enough to create the sea of transformation that is still needed behind the scenes.“, stated the statistician.
And along those lines, he added: “Until studios, executives and producers alter the way they make decisions about who is qualified and able to be in charge of big-budget films, there is little reason to believe that the optimism is guaranteed.”
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
