Women struggle in Hollywood, new research shows
Kathryn Bigelow, winner of best director, and writer Mark Boal, winner of best original screenplay, pose with their Oscars for The Hurt Locker at the 82nd Academy Awards on March 7, 2010, in Hollywood.
Does it feel like movies always end with the guy getting the girl who is way out of his league? There might be a reason for that. Behind the scenes, films are still mostly created by men, new research shows. Only 9 percent of the top 250 grossing Hollywood films in 2012 were directed by women, according to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film.
The Center also found that only 25 percent of producers are women. Women also make up just 15 percent of screenwriters, BBC News reported.
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Independent films are better, but not much, according to research published yesterday by the Sundance Institute. The institute studied 11,197 directors, writers, producers, cinematographers and editors in US from 2002-2012, and found that just 29.8 percent of the filmmakers were female, according to a press release.
"There has been no sustained or meaningful change across the last 11 years in the percentage of directors or producers at the Sundance Film Festival," study director Stacy L. Smith told CNBC.
The research comes after the Cannes Film Festival came under fire last May, when not a single female director was in competition to win its main prize, the Palme d'Or.