Women are usually outnumbered in filmmaking, but recent study suggests more women than ever are directing top films. From “Captain Marvel” to “Frozen II,” high-grossing films featuring female directors made noise in 2019.
Women made up more than 10 percent of the directors on last year’s widely watched films, according to the study “Inclusion in the Director’s Chair: Analysis of Director Gender & Race/Ethnicity Across 1,300 Top Films from 2007 to 2019.” Results are more than twice as many as in 2018 and the highest number recorded in over a decade.
Researchers from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California revealed that in 113 directors involved in the top 100 films, 12 were women, an increase from just five in 2018. Among the major films that feature female directors in 2019 are “Hustlers,” “Little Women,” “Abominable,” “Little,” and “Queen & Slim.”
Meanwhile, only 4.8 percent of directors on average were women among the 1,300 top films from 2007 through to 2019, and the number rose to 10.6 percent in 2019. Another record broken last year is that 15 percent of the directors of all films released by major distribution companies were women.
“Examining the slates of major companies reveals a slightly higher percentage of female directors,” according to the authors, led by Dr. Stacy L. Smith. “However, as some of these films do not earn a sufficient box office gross to place them in the top 100 each year, one question that persists is whether female-directed films are given similar marketing and other support as those by their male counterparts.”
“The lack of value and perceptions of female-helmed content are important to consider, particularly when it is clear from the lack of award nominations that women’s perspectives and
talent are rarely recognized by major entertainment industry voting bodies,” the research states.
Women behind the scenes
However, in a Celluloid Ceiling study by Dr. Martha Lauzen at the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, women working behind the scenes were outnumbered four to one by men since 2018.
Her findings reveal that 14 percent of women directors on those films, a 15 percent decline from the previous year. Moreover, a third of those films had one woman or none working as directors, editors, writers, executive producers, and cinematographers.
