Study shows ‘catastrophic’ 10-year low for female representation in film

Margot Robbie in Barbie. Photograph: PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy

A new study has shown that the amount of female leads in Hollywood movies is at a 10-year low.

Despite the $1.4bn success of Barbie, last year’s top 100 films saw just 30 feature a female lead or co-lead, the worst result since 2014 according to a new study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.

“This is a catastrophic step back for girls and women in film,” Dr Stacy L Smith, research head, said in a statement. “In the last 14 years, we have charted progress in the industry, so to see this reversal is both startling and in direct contrast to all of the talk of 2023 as the ‘year of the woman’.”

The results follow a record high in 2022 with a 44% result. Despite a number of major female-lead films moving to 2024, such as Luca Guadagnino’s romantic drama Challengers starring Zendaya, the study’s authors do not believe this to be the reason, writing that “we cannot explain the collapse” and calling it “an industry failure”.

The number of films led by women of colour also fell from 18 to 14 which still marks a major leap from 2007, when the study originated, with just one. Only three films in 2023 featured a woman over the age of 45 as a lead or co-lead compared to 32 for men in the same age category.

Those behind the study stressed that the success of Barbie, which became the year’s highest-grossing movie, is not reason enough to be optimistic. “One film does not represent progress across the industry and cannot bear the burden of lifting the industry to inclusion,” they wrote. “The results this year point to an industry grown apathetic about efforts surrounding diversity and inclusion.”

The study comes just weeks after another damning report from the same team which showed that female directors are also on the decrease with 16% of the top 100 films coming from women compared to 18% the year before. “Over more than a decade and a half, the percentage of women in top directing jobs has not even grown by 10 percentage points,” Smith said at the time.

The biggest US box office hit so far of 2024 is Mean Girls, led by a female-heavy cast. In the next year, major box office hopes spearheaded by women include Godzilla v Kong: The New Empire starring Rebecca Hall, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga starring Anya Taylor-Joy, A Quiet Place: Day One starring Lupita Nyong’o and Wicked starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.