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.
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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.
That's a great point. I thought the initiatives would strive for a 50/50 balance which is why 16% surprises me so much.
I wonder what the ratio is between men who want to become filmmakers and women who want to become filmmakers, and if it's actually 50/50.
This is often driven by media portrayal. If young women aren't seeing women being portrayed as directors in media, they might not make the mental leap to "I want to be a director, and I think it's possible". For example, the x files led to women in stem having more confidence in their choice of career (STEM career). https://geenadavisinstitute.org/research/the-scully-effect-i-want-to-believe-in-stem/
they might not make the mental leap to “I want to be a director, and I think it’s possible”.
You have an awfully low opinion of women's agency.
Regarding STEM: Countries with higher gender equality have lower rates of women in STEM. One factor there is that STEM pays well so in less equal societies getting into it gets you independence and security that is not necessary in more equal ones.
Regarding CS in particular, it was found that the type of examples in intro courses has a lot of influence, e.g. you can explain Dijkstra's algorithm by talking about finding the shortest path a message might take between two people who know each other only via chains of acquaintances, or by having a robot find a path through a maze. Once people are into the field it doesn't matter any more as they recognise examples as that, mere examples of a more general thing, but the intro classes should address preferences of different populations equally and we don't have to get into why those preferences exist that's contextually irrelevant. Just do it. Much more fruitful than adulating Ada Lovelace or Grace Hopper. At least the latter would probably have punched you for it.
This has very little to do with my opinion of women's agency and has more to do with my opinion on human agency in general. I have known many women in my stem field who are better than me at my job, and I know many that have faced discrimination/hostile work places.
I mention the Scully effect (see also the uhura effect) because as humans, we aren't immune from propaganda, and when media companies accidentally or purposefully make a character that inspired people, it seems weird to not acknowledge it?
The number of big Hollywood directors is small, so general workplace trends might not be as noticable, but I still think that the typical director in media is depicted as male. I think that would have a noticable effect if you could find two populations who had experienced different depictions in media, and polled them about dream jobs.
Is there a particular narrative floating around "women can't do movies"? In the present, I mean? There have been plenty of "women can't be soldiers" narratives in Uhura's time, also (in the US) "black women can if anything only be maids in movies", of course that opens a door.
To me, "women can't do movies" makes about as much sense as "women can't write books". Ask even a paleoconservative and I doubt either would make sense to them. There has to be a narrative that needs to be broken for a narrative-breaking role model to have an effect, especially as "you can do anything, girl" is also a narrative.
Also, rant: Why is it that female role models got a downgrade. I'm talking about the original Mulan "be smart about things and play to your strengths and you can achieve the barely imaginable" vs. remake Mulan "you have literal magic powers that's why you're better than everyone at everything" type of thing.
...just looked at who wrote/directed either and let me just say that according to this limited sample, it is infinitely better to have men write and direct inspirational movies for girls than let women do it. Just for the record I don't doubt that women can make good movies, those just clearly can't, and I hated the remake before I just looked up who made it.
What's more important: That the movie inspires a billion young girls or that the behind the scenes inspires the 10k who bother to watch it?
The medical profession used to be totally male-dominated. That didn’t stop women from becoming doctors in droves despite all the discrimination and outright bullying they faced. Now women dominate many of the medical specialities.
I think this is different. I think becoming a film director is simply not a viable career path for 99% of all people who attempt it, regardless of gender. This is very much distinct from both acting and music as careers (there are countless moderately successful small-time actors and musicians but almost no small-time film directors).
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.