'Barbie' was a great pop culture moment for women but it hasn't resulted in real change in the film industry — yet

• "Barbie" may have been the biggest hit of 2023, but its director, Greta Gerwig, is a rarity in Hollywood. 
• Two recent studies highlight progress for women directors and creatives behind the scenes has stalled.
• According to USC, only 5.6% of directors on the top 1,600 films from 2007 to 2022 were women.

"Barbie" may have been the highest-grossing movie of 2023 and the first film by a solo woman director to cross $1 billion, but its impact hasn't been felt in Hollywood, yet.

According to two recent studies on inclusion in Hollywood from USC Annenberg's Inclusion Initiative and San Diego State University's Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, progress for women directors has stalled.

SDSU's report, "The Celluloid Ceiling," has tracked the number of women employed in behind-the-scenes roles in the film industry for the last 26 years. Female directors accounted for just 16% of the 250 top-grossing movies this past year, down from 18% in 2022.

"2023 was a year in which things were not as they seemed in Hollywood," Martha Lauzen, Ph.D., the SDSU study's author, wrote. "It's the ultimate illusion. Greta Gerwig's well-deserved triumph belied the gender inequality that pervades the mainstream film industry."

USC Annenberg's annual study looked at the top-grossing 1,600 films from 2007 to 2022 and found that only 5.6% of those directors were women. Only 73 individual women directed the 1,488 highest-grossing movies. 

And it's not just directors.

According to SDSU's study, in the last year, 94% of the top 250 films had no female cinematographers, 86% had no female composers, 74% had no female writers, and 72% had no female editors. Movies with a female director usually employ more women behind the scenes, the study found.

When you look at the data, these numbers have barely budged since 1998. It's sad.

Five years after Frances McDormand urged the industry to adopt inclusion riders in her 2018 Oscars speech to mitigate Hollywood's representation problem, not much has changed.

"White male directors benefit from repeat opportunities more often than women and people of color," the report's authors, Stacy L Smith, Ph.D., Katherine Pieper, Ph.D., and Sam Wheeler, wrote. "Hiring women and people of color more than once across popular motion pictures is one important solution for change."

When women get these opportunities, it's not always for a solo project.

Only six of the 100 highest-grossing movies of all time were directed by women, a milestone that's minimized since the top three — "Captain Marvel," "Frozen," and "Frozen II" — were codirected by men.

The percentage of women directors didn't increase after "Frozen," co-directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck, became the highest-grossing animated movie of all time in 2014 (only to be surpassed by its sequel.) Nor did it shift much after Patty Jenkins directed, arguably, the DC Extended Universe's strongest entry with 2017's "Wonder Woman," which became that year's top-grossing movie.

One of the biggest wins in the past few years is that female directors have been given the freedom to direct potential franchise films on their own without the co-credit of a male colleague. Nia DaCosta directed "The Marvels." Chloe Zhao directed "Eternals."

And there are other signs of progress. According to USC's study, women directed 14% of the top 100 films in 2023, up from 11% of the top 100 films of 2022. It's a small but mighty cohort.

So maybe "Barbie" will help move the needle for new, original projects from here on out for more female creatives. It'll just happen at a snail's pace.