Executive Editor-in-Chief
2023 was the worst year for women in film since 2007, research finds
A new study from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that women and girls made up just 30% of leading roles in the top major films of 2023, a 14 percentage point decline from the year before. The trend extended to women and other underrepresented groups both in front of and behind the camera, revealing an overall stagnation in inclusion efforts across the film industry.
Just 32% of the 5,084 total speaking characters in the top films of 2023 were girls/women, according to the annual study, which tracked 1,700 films, while 68.2% were male and less than 1% were nonbinary. The number of girls/women dropped to the lowest percentage since 2007, the first year of the USC study. The number of female directors, composers, writers and producers also remained flat from 2022.
The report also found that only 11% of the top 100 films of 2023 had a balanced gender distribution. That means that about half of all speaking roles were played by women/girls. That's the same percentage as in 2007.
