Issues surrounding inclusivity and diversity make headlines often these days, but the attention isn’t exactly translating to real action. According to this year’s edition of USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative’s annual study, Hollywood’s progress on representation has been more or less stagnant for a full decade across practically all marginalized groups. “As the reverberations of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements continue to resonate in the entertainment industry and beyond, this investigation marks how far we still have to go,” the report concludes.
This year, the study examined 1,100 films and 48,757 characters between 2007–2017, with an eye toward independent speaking or named characters shown on-screen for gender, race / ethnicity, LGBT, and disability; it also cataloged gender and race in behind-the-camera roles, including directing, writing, and production. Among its main findings: female speaking roles still clock in at only 31.8 percent as of 2017, a number that has barely budged over the past 10 years. And of the top films in 2017, only 33 percent featured a female lead or co-lead.
Though part of the on-screen portrayal problem links back to the “lifespan” of female actors — which found that women 40 or older accounted for only 24.6 percent of the women counted — life behind the camera is not much better. In filmmaking, only 7.3 percent of directors are women. Between 2007 and 2017, only 43 women directed films among those 1,100 studied, and just four were women of color, all of them mixed race.
The low inclusion statistics extend beyond gender
The low inclusion statistics extend beyond gender, of course. The study found that 70.7 percent of film characters are white. Films also continue to lack representation for LGBT characters and characters with disabilities, especially when those categories intersect with race / ethnicity. Just 14 of the films surveyed featured a lead character with a disability, and more than two-thirds of characters with disabilities portrayed overall were male.
Although the numbers paint a depressing picture for progress, change isn’t hopeless. The study asserts that adding even five women to the top 100 movies for the next three years would help achieve gender equality, as well as open up opportunities for intersectional representation. “Workplace safety goes hand in hand with workplace equity,” its authors write. “As we have demonstrated, there are still few films where equity is a hallmark of the production or the content. Addressing the lack of inclusivity in cinema is an essential part of building a future in which talented individuals can safely create, inspire, and entertain audiences who are finally able to see their own challenges and triumphs on screen.” Confronting these gaps will require more than just headlines, but a real effort on the part of Hollywood.