Women nonetheless face steep challenges securing high film jobs

Last yr, girls made up simply 13% of administrators engaged on the highest 250 movies.

That stage represents a 3-percentage-point decline from 2024, when girls led 16% of the top-grossing motion pictures, based on a San Diego State University examine launched Thursday.

The troubling tabulation comes as Hollywood seeks to show the web page from a gut-punching yr that included the Los Angeles wildfires, ongoing declines of native movie and tv manufacturing and the deaths of beloved filmmakers.

“Hamnet,” directed by Chloé Zhao; “Freakier Friday,” helmed by Nisha Ganatra; and “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” led by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, had been among the many few notable exceptions.

The college’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film and its founder Martha M. Lauzen have tracked employment of ladies in behind-the-scenes decision-making jobs for practically three a long time. Roles included within the examine are: administrators, writers, government producers, producers, editors and cinematographers. Data from greater than 3,500 credit on top-grossing movies had been used to compile the report.

Lauzen launched her effort in 1998, assuming that stating the imbalance would trigger doorways to swing open for ladies in Hollywood. But regardless of numerous requires motion, and a high-profile however short-lived federal investigation, the image has stayed largely the identical.

“The numbers are remarkably stable,” Lauzen stated in an interview. “They’ve been remarkably stable for more than a quarter of a century.”

Overall, girls made up 23% of all administrators, writers, producers, government producers, editors and administrators of images on the 250 top-grossing movies in 2025, based on Lauzen’s report: “The Celluloid Ceiling: Employment of Behind-the-Scenes Women on Top Grossing U.S. Films.” In 2024 and 2020, the share was the identical.

Her examine discovered that, in 2025, girls constituted 28% of movie producers and 23% of the chief producers.

Among the ranks of screenwriters, solely 20% had been girls.

Women additionally made up 20% of editors, matching the extent in 1998, when Lauzen started her examine.

“There’s been absolutely no change,” she stated.

Among cinematographers, girls occupied simply 7% of these influential roles on the 250 top-grossing movies.

The cinematographer serves because the director of images, enormously shaping the look and the texture of a movie. Last yr marked a stark decline from 2024, when girls constituted 12% of cinematographers.

There has been motion within the variety of feminine administrators since 1998. That yr, solely 7% of the top-grossing movies had been directed by girls. Last yr’s complete represented a 6 percentage-point enchancment.

Lauzen’s most up-to-date report comes a decade after the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission started taking a look at alleged gender discrimination in Hollywood. But the 2015 evaluation, which was sparked by a request from the American Civil Liberties Union, didn’t get traction. Slightly greater than a yr later, President Obama left workplace and President Trump ushered in a sea change in attitudes.

Hollywood employment additionally has grow to be extra unstable lately due to a pullback in manufacturing by the foremost studios through the COVID-19 pandemic, adopted by the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes.

Despite years of business leaders vocalizing a necessity for better range in government suites and decision-making roles, and the power inequity remaining a punchline for award present jokes, the local weather has modified.

Trump returned to workplace lower than a yr in the past and instantly referred to as for the tip of range and inclusion packages.

Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, abolished range packages inside his company and launched investigations into Walt Disney Co.’s and Comcast’s inner hiring packages. Carr desires to finish packages he sees as disadvantaging white individuals.

Paramount, led by tech scion David Ellison, agreed to dismantle all range and inclusion packages on the firm, which incorporates CBS and Comedy Central, as a situation for successful FCC approval for the Ellison household’s takeover of Paramount. That merger was finalized in August.

Lauzen stated she’s uncertain what her future research might discover.

Corporate consolidation has added to the uncertainty.

Warner Bros., a signature Hollywood studio for greater than a century, is on the public sale block.

Last month, Warner Bros. Discovery’s board agreed to promote the movie and tv studios, HBO and HBO Max to Netflix in an $82.7-billion deal. However, the Ellisons’ Paramount is contesting Warner’s alternative and has launched a hostile takeover bid, asking traders to tender their Warner shares to Paramount.

“Consolidation now hangs over the film industry like a guillotine, with job losses likely and the future of the theatrical movie-going experience in question,” Lauzen wrote in her report.

“Add the current political war on diversity, and women in the film industry now find themselves in uncharted territory,” Lauzen wrote. “Hollywood has never needed permission to exclude or diminish women, but the industry now has it.”