Despite the past year filled with heralding change, women are still being underrepresented in film. Even with pronounced success from films like Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians, where the casts were filled with individuals from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, women still had a significantly less percentage rate of representation across film industry roles than their male counterparts.
Women account for 50% of moviegoers, yet in 2018 women only accounted for 36% of all major characters in film. That low statistic (which is a recent historic high) only accounts for the top-grossing 100 films of 2018. This underrepresentation in the 100 films continues behind the scenes. Research offered by Dr. Martha Lauzen at the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film showed that women accounted for 16% of film industry roles that includes directors, writers, executive producers, producers, editors, and cinematographers. Of the 100 films, 96.4% of the 112 directors were men with the remaining 3.6% being women; a gender ratio of 27 to 1.
These figures are taken from Dr. Lauzen’s research The Celluloid Ceiling, a series of reports that tracks employment statistics for women in Hollywood. The name itself is a metaphor of the “glass ceiling” defined as “an invisible barrier that keeps a given demographic from rising beyond a certain level in a hierarchy.” Cleary the statistics display a blatant underrepresentation of women in film.
While reading statistics can be boring or create a “so what?” mentality, these statistics affect half the global population and are extremely important to how society evolves and develops in the coming years. Women have a long history of being underrepresented across a number of fields. It’s time that we address these disparities and work to fix them.
It is not difficult to fix this problem of female representation. It just takes action. Stacy Smith, founding director of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, suggested the idea of “Inclusion Riders”. The idea allows actors to include a stipulation in their contract that demands a certain level of diversity in a film’s cast or crew. Hollywood should be held accountable with a push for immediate change.
Hopefully 2019 has a better representation of women in film. It’s past due that we should be viewed equally alongside men﹣ in all fields.
Here is the research I used to provide information on the subject:
https://womenandhollywood.com/resources/statistics/2018-statistics/
https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2018_Its_a_Mans_Celluloid_World_Report.pdf
http://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/inequality-in-1200-films-research-brief_2019-02-12.pdf