Posted Tuesday 16 Jan 2018
It's been a year of enormous upheaval for the film industry, but a new report analysing the directors of top-grossing US films has found 'no meaningful change in over a decade' for female, black and Asian directors. The report, authored by Dr Stacy L Smith and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, combined data on the gender, race, and age of 1,223 filmmakers working on 1,100 top-grossing films released between 2007 and 2017. The analysis also focused on women in executive and leadership positions at major media companies.
Some key findings on gender from the study include:
- Across 11 years and 1,100 movies, 96% of all directors were male and 4% were female. This translates to 22 male directors hired to every one female director.
- Only four black female directors, two Asian female directors, and one Latina were hired to direct across 1,100 popular movies.
- Male directors start their careers earlier (20s) than female directors and some continue working into their 70s and 80s. The latter is not the case for women directors.