Study Confirms Hollywood Hasn’t Made Progress on Diversity

Despite ongoing debates and rampant promises of diversity, research shows that women and minorities are still excluded from Hollywood’s top movies.

Diversity has been a hot topic in Hollywood lately. The hashtag #OscarsSoWhite trended again when, for the second year in a row, the Academy Awards acting nominees included no people of color. Gender and race-bent remakes are all the rage, giving studios an excuse to disguise their laziness as social awareness. Television executives flaunt statistics on nonwhite cast members the way companies show off sales numbers.

But has this talk translated into concrete change? Not according to the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, which released a Sept. 6 report on equality in popular movies through its Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative. The study examined the presence and portrayal of female, nonwhite, LGBT, and disabled characters in the 100 highest-grossing films of 2015. The MDSC Initiative released similar studies each year dating back to 2007, monitoring change (or lack thereof) across time.

Long story short, things aren’t good. Of the 4,370 characters evaluated, 31.4 percent were women – a slight increase from 28.1 percent in 2014 but not an indication of meaningful change. In fact, over nine years of research, the percentage has hovered around 30 percent, topping out at 32.8 percent in both 2008 and 2009 and hitting a low last year. Female characters are likely to be younger than their male counterparts and more likely to appear nude. Also, a mere 4.1 percent of the 886 directors evaluated since 2007 were female.

All eight of last year’s female directors were white.

The statistics on race are even more troubling. 73.7 percent of the evaluated characters were white, with black characters comprising the second highest group (12.2 percent). Middle Eastern, American Indian, and Pacific Islander characters each comprised less than one percent. Only four of the 107 movie directors in 2015 were black, and six were Asian. All eight of last year’s female directors were white.

32 LGBT speaking characters appeared in 2015’s top films, 13 more than last year. 19 of those characters were gay, seven were lesbian, five were bisexual, and one was transgender. None of them were leads or co-leads in their films. This year, for the first time, the study also evaluated portrayals of disability. It found that 2.4 percent of speaking characters were depicted as having a disability, and 61 percent of those disabilities were physical, as opposed to mental (37 percent) or communicative (18 percent). 19 percent of disabled characters were women, which the study describes as “a new low for gender equality in film.”

Hollywood’s idea of a a good disabled character is one that commits suicide. Image via Warner Brothers

Here are some other interesting stats from the study:

• 32 percent of films featured women in lead or co-lead roles, an 11 percent increase from last year.
• Teenaged women are more likely to be sexualized or shown nude than young adult or middle-aged women.
• Only one of the 113 composers working on the evaluated 2015 films was a woman.
• 17 percent of evaluated films from 2015 featured no black speaking or named characters, and 49 films featured no Asian characters.
• 82 of the top 100 films from 2015 featured no LGBT characters.

No one expected progress in Hollywood to be easy. A century of institutionalized bigotry and discrimination won’t be fixed in a year. But it’s somewhat disheartening to see just how little has changed, despite increased awareness of the problem and heightened visibility for advocates of diversity thanks to social media.

Next: Harry Potter, Cursed Child and the Problematic Depiction of Women

Rather than dismissing studies like this as redundant, however, we can use them to keep the situation in perspective. As tempting as it is to rejoice over Wonder Woman (finally) headlining her own movie or to fume about the overwhelming whiteness of said movie’s cast, individual films are ultimately symptoms of a larger epidemic. We can’t blame one for the woes of an entire industry or hail one as a panacea that will remedy all wrongs. It’s a process.