Hollywood Has Only Gotten Worse: Women Did Better In Silent Movies, Says New Study
Women had more representation in top-grossing movies in the silent era than 2022, according to a study.
The foundation of Hollywood was heavily influenced by women in movies. Unfortunately, despite women being crucial to creating film entertainment as we know it over the last hundred years, the representation of women in Hollywood has only gone down, according to a new American Film Institute study reported by Variety. In 2022, out of the 100 top-grossing films produced by Hollywood, including from streaming platforms like Netflix, only 9% were directed by women.
The American Film Institute (AFI) kicked off the movement for film preservation in the United States in 1967. Since then, the non-profit has become the champion for documenting film history and has since been used by academics and fans alike. The organization’s recent study, called “Women They Talk About,” compiled the unrecorded contributions of women in movies during the silent film era and explored the true story of women as primary players in building the American cinema industry.
The Dean of the AFI Conservatory and EVP of the American Film Institute, Susan Ruskin, described the project as a means to inspire future generations of women in movies so that future female filmmakers can continue evolving the industry. The study is featured on AFI’s website and includes additional educational resources for high school-aged filmmakers as well as an index of more than 800 inspiring female film pioneers. In addition to AFI’s research, the site also includes the work of Columbia University’s Women Film Pioneers Project.
The silent film era was an explosive time for filmmaking. Over the course of three years alone, more than 6,000 feature films were created and released, many of which were made by female filmmakers. However, despite women playing a major role in movies during that time, most of them had not previously been recognized by modern historians, and their names remained absent in historical film books or online databases. Part of the AFI’s “Women They Talk About” project included documenting these filmmaking pioneers and cataloging their names so that they will be remembered in history.
Through this process, the AFI learned that there were more women involved in movies during the silent film era than during any other time in filmmaking thus far. The study showed that from 1910 to 1930, women in movies made up almost 11% of all names on the credit rolls. From these names, 27.5% of women were credited as writers or co-writers, with films that were directed by females being 31% more likely to have female writers.
Over the past 100 years, the statistics for women in movies have been a rollercoaster of jumps and dives, with 2022 taking a major plunge from what seemed like an upward trajectory. 25 years ago, women made up 17% of directors. In 2021, the number fell to 12.7%; in 2022, only 9% of directors were females. The number of Black, Asian, Hispanic/Latino, and multi-racial and multi-ethnic film creators also fell in 2022.
AFI hopes to help these numbers rise again and inspire more women and people of color to pioneer a new era of filmmaking. Their next project will be “Behind the Veil,” a study of 6,000 films from the silent film era involving female BIPOC creators.
