Representation for women in the director’s chair dipped to a seven-year low in 2025, according to the annual study from USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.
Looking at the top 100 grossing films of the year, the report notes that only 9 women worked as directors on these movies, representing 8.1 percent of all directors on these films. This is a drop from 2024’s 13.4 percent and is the lowest since 2018’s 4.5 percent.
“The 2025 data reveals that progress for women directors has been fleeting. While it is tempting to think that these changes are a result of who is in the Oval Office, in reality these results are driven by executive decision-making that took place long before any DEI prohibitions took effect. Many of these films were greenlit and in pre-production before the 2024 election,” said the annual study’s founder and author, Dr. Stacey L. Smith, referencing Hollywood’s collective step back from DEI programs and initiatives over the last year.
The study, which also looks at racial diversity, found that 24.3 percent of directors of the top-grossing films were from underrepresented racial groups of 2025’s top 100 grossing films. Women of color made up 5.4 percent of the directors, while 2.7 percent were white women, marking the first year since the start of the report that women of color have outnumbered white women as top-grossing film directors.
Disney led the studios in the hiring of women directors across the 2025 films. Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and Lionsgate did not have a woman director across the films evaluated in the study.
The Annenberg study does not include streaming-only releases on Netflix or other platforms, noting that representation of women directors on these titles is much higher than in top-grossing theatrical releases. Across its 2024 slate, women accounted for 20.5 percent of the directors of Netflix movies.