Hollywood invested in predominantly male-centred movies last year, as the number of female leads in films reached its lowest point in a decade.
Researchers from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative tracked the top 100 grossing films from 2007-2023, uncovering who is dominating in Hollywood’s film industry, on and off the screen.
The results stripped away the “Barbiemania” that dubbed 2023 “the year of the woman” in Hollywood, and revealed what lead researcher Stacy L. Smith called “a catastrophic step back for girls and women in film”.
According to the researchers, just 30 of the top 100 films of 2023 featured a female lead or co-lead. This was the lowest number in a decade and a 14 per cent decrease from 2022’s record-high of 44.
Representation of women behind the screen was even worse: of those 30 films, only 36.7 per cent were directed by women.
Smith said the findings from the research were “both startling and in direct contrast” to the Hollywood’s narrative that 2023 was “the year of the woman”.
“These numbers are more than just a metric of how often girls and women are in protagonist roles. They represent the career opportunities offered to women in the film industry,” Smith said.
“This year, we found that those opportunities have drastically constricted. Even by looking at the films that were moved to 2024 because of the strike, we cannot explain the collapse of women leads/co-leads in 2023 other than to say that this is an industry failure.”
Underrepresented groups
There was an uptick in people from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups featuring in Hollywood films from 2023. Thirty-seven of the top 100 films had a lead/co-lead from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, compared to 31 in 2022. Around half (51.3 per cent) were directed by an underrepresented director.
However, the number of women of colour leading in films from 2023 was concerningly low. Just 14 movies had a woman of colour as the lead/co-lead, compared to 18 in 2022.
Katherine Neff, a lead author in the study, said she was disappointed in the findings of the severe underrepresentation of women of colour.
“The film industry continues to not show up for girls and women and the backpedaling on progress for women of color in leading roles is disappointing,” Neff said.
“This is true not only for young women of color but for underrepresented women in middle age and older, whose stories are often completely erased.”
Who is making the most progress?
Smaller film studios listed as “other distributors” in the study, along with Walt Disney and Warner Bros, had the highest percentage of underrepresented leads or co-leads in their films.
“There is a clear relationship between who works behind the camera and who we see on screen,” Stacy L. Smith said, “yet opportunities are still curtailed for women and people of colour.”
Paramount Pictures and Lionsgate had the poorest number of underrepresented leads or co-leads from their films last year, with 22.2 per cent and 20 per cent respectively.
However, Smith and the researchers found not one Hollywood studio met the proportional representation with US Census figures (41.1 per cent).
She said in the wake of several social movements pushing for policy and legislative change, “storytelling matters more than ever before”.
“The entertainment industry can serve an important role in our democracy to champion diverse and inclusive voices both on screen and behind the camera—but that is not what we see happening this year,” Smith said.
“A change is needed, and quickly, let entertainment become one more institution that falls to outdated, biased, and exclusionary rhetoric.”