Fewer women getting leading roles in top films

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 09/08/2024

There are fewer women having leading roles in top films! Last year fewer girls and women had leading roles compared to 2022. The figure plummeted to 30%, on par with 2010 and a 14 percentage point decline from the year prior, according to a study by the US-based Inclusion Initiative at Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. The findings for all speaking characters show that little has changed for girls/women on screen in more than a decade and a half. 

“Only 32% of speaking characters in 2023 were girls/women, compared to 30% in 2007. A mere 11% of stories were gender-balanced, or featured girls and women in 45-54.9% of all speaking roles. Less than 1% of all characters were gender non-binary in 2023”, the study says.

The investigation covers the 1,700 top films from 2007 to 2023, and a specific look at the 100 top movies of 2023.

“No matter how you examine the data, 2023 was not the ‘Year of the Woman.’ We continue to report the same trends for girls and women on screen, year in and year out,” says professor Stacy L. Smith at the institute. 

“It is clear that there is either a dismissal of women as an audience for more than one or two films per year, a refusal to find ways to create meaningful change, or both. If the industry wants to survive its current moment, it must examine its failure to employ half the population on screen.”

Key findings:

• The percentage of White (56%) characters decreased significantly from 2022 (62%) and 2007 (78%). 
• The percentage of Asian characters in 2023 (18%) was significantly higher than in 2007 (3%), though on par with 2022 (16%). There were no other significant changes for any other racial/ethnic groups across 17 years. 
• Overall, the percentage of underrepresented characters (44%) was similar to the percentage of the US population that identifies with an underrepresented racial/ethnic group (41.1%).
• Girls/women of colour filled leading/co-leading roles in only 14 movies in 2023—a decrease from the 18 they led in 2022, but higher than the 1 movie in 2007 that featured a woman of colour protagonist. 
• Only 1 movie in 2023 starred a woman of colour age 45 or older in a leading role.  
• 1.2% of speaking characters in the top films of 2023 were identified as members of the LGBTQ+ community. There has been no meaningful change in this figure since 2014. 
• No transgender characters appeared across the 100 top films of 2023. 
• Of the 60 LGBTQ+ characters included in 2023’s top movies, 20 were lesbian, 31 were gay, 8 were bisexual, and 1 was identified with another sexuality. There were 76 films in 2023 that did not feature even one LGBTQ+ character, similar to the 72 in 2022 without any LGBTQ+ representation.
• In 2023, 2.2% of all speaking characters were shown with a disability—virtually identical to 2015 (2.4%). 
• Women directors, 2023 (12%) was not different than 2022 (9%)  but does reflect change from 2007 (3%). Across 17 years, 6.5% of directors of the 1,700 most popular films were women. This reflects 98 individual women directors compared to 878 individual men.
• Women have directed a maximum of 4 films (Lana Wachowski, Anne Fletcher) across the time frame evaluated, while the top male-identified directors have helmed 18 movies (Tyler Perry), 14 movies (Steven Spielberg), 12 movies (Clint Eastwood), and 11 movies (Ridley Scott).
• Of credited writers in 2023, women filled 15% of the positions, which was similar to the 16% of jobs they held in 2022 and not different than the 11% of writers who were women in 2007. 
• Only 24% of producers were women in 2023, nearly the same as the 27% in 2022 and not different than 2007 (20%). 
• Women composers reached a 17-year high point in 2023 at 9%, which was no different than 2022’s 8%, but significantly higher than the 0 women working as composers in 2007.