Final 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, in keeping with a San Diego State College research 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 Final Summer season,” led by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, had been among the many few notable exceptions.
The college’s Middle for the Examine of Girls in Tv and Movie and its founder Martha M. Lauzen have tracked employment of girls in behind-the-scenes decision-making jobs for almost three a long time. Roles included within the research are: administrators, writers, govt producers, producers, editors and cinematographers. Information 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. However 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 steady,” Lauzen stated in an interview. “They’ve been remarkably steady for greater than 1 / 4 of a century.”
General, girls made up 23% of all administrators, writers, producers, govt producers, editors and administrators of images on the 250 top-grossing movies in 2025, in keeping with Lauzen’s report: “The Celluloid Ceiling: Employment of Behind-the-Scenes Girls on High Grossing U.S. Movies.” In 2024 and 2020, the share was the identical.
Her research discovered that, in 2025, girls constituted 28% of movie producers and 23% of the chief producers.
Among the many ranks of screenwriters, solely 20% had been girls.
Girls additionally made up 20% of editors, matching the extent in 1998, when Lauzen started her research.
“There’s been completely no change,” she stated.
Amongst cinematographers, girls occupied simply 7% of these influential roles on the 250 top-grossing movies.
The cinematographer serves because the director of images, tremendously shaping the look and the texture of a movie. Final yr marked a stark decline from 2024, when girls constituted 12% of cinematographers.
There was motion within the variety of feminine administrators since 1998. That yr, solely 7% of the top-grossing movies had been directed by girls. Final yr’s whole represented a 6 percentage-point enchancment.
Lauzen’s most up-to-date report comes a decade after the U.S. Equal Employment Alternative Fee started alleged gender discrimination in Hollywood. However the 2015 evaluation, which was sparked by a request from the American Civil Liberties Union, did not 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 in recent times due to a pullback in manufacturing by the most important studios in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, adopted by the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes.
Regardless of years of trade leaders vocalizing a necessity for higher variety in govt suites and decision-making roles, and the continual 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 variety and inclusion packages.
Trump’s Federal Communications Fee chair, Brendan Carr, abolished variety packages inside his company and launched investigations into Walt Disney Co.’s and Comcast’s inside hiring packages. Carr needs to finish packages he sees as disadvantaging white individuals.
Paramount, led by tech scion David Ellison, agreed to dismantle all variety and inclusion packages on the firm, which incorporates CBS and Comedy Central, as a situation for profitable FCC approval for the Ellison household’s takeover of Paramount. That merger was finalized in August.
Lauzen stated she’s not sure what her future research could discover.
Company consolidation has added to the uncertainty.
Warner Bros., a signature Hollywood studio for greater than a century, is on the public sale block.
Final 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. Nonetheless, the Ellisons’ Paramount is contesting Warner’s selection and has launched a hostile takeover bid, asking buyers to tender their Warner shares to Paramount.
“Consolidation now hangs over the movie trade like a guillotine, with job losses seemingly and the way forward for the theatrical movie-going expertise in query,” Lauzen wrote in her report.
“Add the present political warfare on variety, and ladies within the movie trade now discover themselves in uncharted territory,” Lauzen wrote. “Hollywood has by no means wanted permission to exclude or diminish girls, however the trade now has it.”
