The top films of 2024 had more women and people with disabilities in lead roles but showed regression in the industry for underrepresented racial/ethnic groups and the LGBTQ+ community, according to a report from Dr Stacy L Smith and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California.
The report, Inequality in 1,800 Popular Films: Examining Portrayals Of Gender, Race/Ethnicity, LGBTQ+ & Characters With Disabilities From 2007 To 2024, is the latest in series of annual surveys and looked at the 100 most successful films released in North America last year.
The report found that 55% of the year’s top releases featured women or girls in lead or co-lead roles, compared to only 30% in 2023 and 20% in 2007. However, only 33.6% of all speaking characters were female, compared to 31.7% in 2023.
Behind the camera, 21.7% of directors, 12.9% of screenwriters and 27% of producers were women in 2024, with no increase in any of those percentages from 2023.
Underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, which make up 41.6% of the US population, accounted for only 36.4% of all speaking characters in 2024, a decline from 2023.
Underrepresented groups provided 23.2% of directors in 2024, slightly up from 22.4% in 2023. There were fewer Black directors in 2024 than the previous year, while the numbers for Hispanic/Latino and Asian directors did not change.
Less than 1% of speaking characters in 2024 releases were LGBTQ+, showing little change since the group was first measured in the report a decade ago. And only five films – among them Love Lies Bleeding and We Live In Time – featured LGBTQ+ leads or co-leads.
Only 2.4% of all speaking characters had a disability in 2024, far below the 27.7% of the US population living with a disability. However, 20% of 2024’s top-grossing films had a lead or co-lead with a disability, a big increase over the 8% in 2023 and 10% in 2015.
In its conclusions, the report says “there is room for the industry to innovate with inclusion in mind. This primarily involves invoking decision-making processes that do not rely on outdated methods of evaluating talent”.
The report recommends “the use of objective evaluation criteria in the decision-making process. For companies, this means that the use of ‘gut feelings,’ ‘hunches,’ or familiarity is replaced by a process that uses objective metrics to assess qualifications or suitability for a role”.
Dr Smith said: “The major areas of progress this year, for women and for characters with disabilities, occurred only for leading characters. This suggests that the change is not driven by an authentic desire for inclusion and matched with strategies based in expertise. Instead, ad hoc decision-making is the reason for these increases. Until evidence- and theory-based strategies are implemented, progress will continue to be sporadic and uneven.”
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