“The pace of change has been slow for women directors,” a brand new report from Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative concludes. Titled “Inclusion in the Director’s Chair,” the research examines the gender and race/ethnicity of administrators working throughout the highest 100 grossing fictional movies from 2007 to 2022.
This 12 months’s findings depart a lot to be desired. “A total of 111 directors were hired across the 100 top fictional films of 2022. Of these, 91 percent were
men and 9 percent (n=10) were women. This is a gender ratio of 10.1 male directors to 1 every one female director hired,” the report particulars. The 10 ladies had been Olivia Newman (“Where the Crawdads Sing”), Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Woman King”), Olivia Wilde (“Don’t Worry Darling”), Jessica M. Thompson (“The Invitation”), Kat Coiro (“Marry Me”), Rosalind Ross (“Father Stu”), Halina Reijn (“Bodies, Bodies, Bodies”), Kasi Lemmons (“Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody”), Chinonye Chukwu (“Till”), and Maria Schrader (“She Said”).
These figures are “on par” with 2021, when ladies accounted for 12.6 % of the highest administrators. Across 1,653 administrators over 16 years, 5.6 % had been ladies.
Only 2.7 % of the top-grossing administrators in 2022 had been ladies of colour: Prince-Bythewood, Lemmons, and Chukwu.
As frustratingly low as this quantity is, it’s sadly not an anomaly. The report explains, “Across all 16 years of the sample, women of color were hired as directors on only 21 movies. This translates into 1.3 percent of all directing opportunities or a ratio of 63.3 White directors to every 1 woman of color.” The 21 jobs had been held by 16 completely different ladies. Only 5 ladies of colour labored greater than as soon as throughout the 16-year pattern: Prince-Bythewood, Lemmons, Ava DuVernay, Jennifer Yuh Nelson, and Stella Meghie. “Universal Pictures was the top performer overall in attaching women of color to direct their studio’s movies,” the research reveals.
Women of colour are being denied directing alternatives, however their movies “had the highest average critical reception or Metacritic score (62.2, range=44-93) in comparison to films by White males (54.8, range=9-100), underrepresented males (54.5, range=11-99), and White females (55.7, range=22-95). As Smith and co. describe, “women of color worked the least but produced the highest quality films in comparison to their peers.”
In 2022 Sony Pictures Entertainment was the distributor that labored with probably the most ladies administrators (5). Over 16 years, Universal Pictures labored with probably the most ladies administrators. STX Entertainment had the best share of ladies administrators however the lowest general quantity of distributed motion pictures.
The report calls out quite a few distributors for failing to evolve with the occasions. “In 2022 and five years after the explosion of the #MeToo and Times Up movement, Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, STX Entertainment, 20th Century, and Walt Disney Studios did not hire or acquire one film with a woman at the helm,” it notes.
In the report’s conclusion, its authors be aware that that change has been “slow” and “there are still barriers that prevent women from working on the top movies released each year. One such barrier is repeat opportunities. More than three-quarters of the women directors in the sample have helmed only one popular movie in the 16 years we studied, while this is true for just over half of men. For the numbers to change, companies from the major studios to independent distributors must not only hire women behind the camera, and more than once, they must provide the marketing and publicity support that films need to reach broad audiences. Until that happens, we will continue to see the numbers for women creep slowly forward.” It additionally emphasizes that “as companies seek to honor commitments made in the wake of 2020’s racial reckoning, one place to begin is by opening up access across their slate for people of color to work as directors.” As the numbers illustrate, “hiring women of color was the exception, not the rule”: “the gains and plateau for underrepresented directors were primarily experienced by men of color.” This “speaks to the failure of studios and distributors to identify and support talented women of color directors by hiring them for films on their slates.”
The authors be aware that there’s been “little or incremental change” within the years the research has been revealed. “The explanation for the lack of progress is simple: too few women and people of color are hired for top directing jobs,” they emphasize. “Ultimately, the solution is also straightforward: hire more women
and people of color to direct top movies. Despite the simplicity of the solution, change remains elusive.”
Read the complete report right here.