Despite the blockbuster success of Barbie, a new report from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative shows that 2023’s movies featured the lowest percentage of female leads and co-stars in a decade.

Just 30% of the top 100 films of 2023 featured a female star or co-lead, according to the study as quoted by Variety, as major movie productions focused on male protagonists.

The researchers found that 2007 had the lowest percentage of female protagonists, at 20%, and 2022 had a record high of 44%.

The initiative’s founder, Stacy L. Smith, called 2023’s 30% mark a “catastrophic step back for girls and women in film.”

Her statement added, “These numbers are more than just a metric of how often girls and women are in protagonist roles. They represent the career opportunities offered to women in the industry.

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Smith continued, “Even by looking at the films that were moved to 2024 because of the strike, we cannot explain the collapse of women leads/co-leads in 2023,” categorizing it as “an industry failure.”

Further, only three movies in 2023 — not counting ensemble movies like 80 for Brady — featured actresses who were 45 or older. In that same year, 32 movies starred men in that age group. 

On a related note, a January report from the initiative showed the lack of gender diversity also applied to work behind the camera in 2023: Of the 116 directors evaluated in 2023, just 12.1% were women.

Further, looking back 17 years and taking into account the work of 1,769 directors, just 6% were women. The researchers noted that back in 2007, just 2.7% of directors were women — but by 2022, that needle only moved to 9%.

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