Statistics about Female Film Critics
- A September 2018 report from Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative (and conducted with Time’s Up Entertainment) used reviews of 300 top-grossing films from 2015–2017 posted on Rotten Tomatoes to assess gender and race/ethnicity of critics, including how this varies by film distributor and publication outlet.
- Only 21.3 percent of the 59,751 reviews evaluated were written by female critics, a gender ratio of 3.7 male reviewers to every 1 female reviewer. Critics from underrepresented racial/ethnic backgrounds composed 16.8 percent of these reviews and white male critics wrote 65.6 percent of the reviews.
- Among top critics, white males wrote between 65–70 percent of film reviews at notable daily papers, daily and weekly newspapers, entertainment trades, general news outlets, and entertainment publications. The range across these outlets for white females was 6.1–33 percent, with general news scoring highest.
- Underrepresented female critics wrote as few as 1.6 percent of all reviews at general news publications and at most 3.3 percent of reviews at the entertainment trades.
- Of the 300 films studied, 48.3 percent did not feature one underrepresented female top critic as a reviewer. Similarly, 45.4 percent of the 108 female-driven movies and 35.1 percent of the 57 films with an underrepresented actor at the center were not reviewed by even one underrepresented female top critic.
Source: https://variety.com/2018/film/spotlight/movie-reviewers-women-minorities-statistics-1202931532/
Statistics about Women in Hollywood
- Women account for 50 percent of moviegoers. (MPAA 2017)
- Of the top 100 grossing films of 2017, women represented:
- 8 percent of directors
- 10 percent of writers
- 2 percent of cinematographers
- 24 percent of producers
- 14 percent of editors
(Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film)
- Kathryn Bigelow is the only woman to ever win the Academy Award for Best Director. Only five women have ever been nominated (Lina Wertmüller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Bigelow, and Greta Gerwig).
- In 2018, “Mudbound”’s Rachel Morrison became the first woman ever nominated for the Academy Award for Cinematography.
- In the top 100 films of 2017:
- Women comprised 24 percent of protagonists.
- Sixty-three percent of female characters had an identifiable job or occupation (compared to 78 percent of male characters).
- Fifty-five percent of female characters were seen in their work setting, actually working (versus 69 percent of males).
(Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film)
- Sixty-eight percent of female characters were white in the top 100 films of 2017. Sixteen percent were Black, 7 percent were Asian, 7 percent were Latina, and 2 percent were of another race or ethnicity. (Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film)
