Female protagonists reach parity with men in top-grossing films of 2024

NEW YORK (AP) — For the first time in recent history, the percentage of top-grossing films featuring female protagonists equaled the percentage of films with male protagonists, according to a pair of annual studies released Tuesday.

Movies like “Wicked,"“Inside Out 2" and “The Substance” lifted Hollywood's theatrical releases to gender parity in leading roles in 2024. Of the 100 top domestic grossing films in 2024, 42% had female protagonists, and 42% had male protagonists, according to a report issued by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.

The USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which also released its annual study Tuesday, found that 54% of the top 100 films at the box office in 2024 featured girls and women as protagonists. That's a massive jump from just the year prior, when 30% of films featured women in lead roles. In 2007, when the USC annual study began, that figure was just 20%.

"This is the first time we can say that gender equality has been reached in top-grossing films,” Stacy L. Smith, founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, said in a statement.

“In 2024, three of the top five films had a girl or woman in a leading role, as did five of the top 10 films — including the number one film of the year, Disney’s ‘Inside Out 2,’" added Smith. "We have always known that female-identified leads would make money. This is not the result of an economic awakening but is due to a number of different constituencies and efforts — at advocacy groups, at studios, through DEI initiatives — to assert the need for equality on screen.”

Other metrics suggested the gains in leading roles masked still-endemic disparity throughout Hollywood. The percentage of female characters in speaking roles increased from 35% to 37% in 2024, according to the San Diego State study. Major female characters rose from 38% in 2023 to 39% in 2024.

“Films such as ‘The Substance’ pushed back hard against a culture that considers women disposable,” Martha Lauzen, director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, stated. “While the number of films with female protagonists rose to a historic high in 2024 after a dismally lean 2023, the percentages of women in the more stable categories of major and speaking roles reflected only minor gains.”

Universal Studios, which is led by Donna Langley, was the studio with the best record for female representation. In 2024, 66.7% of Universal releases centered on girls and women, according to the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.

Neither study captures the large number of films released directly on streaming platforms or films that fall outside the top 100 movies in theaters. But for decades, those top box-office films have offered a snapshot of a film industry that has long failed to come close to reflecting the demographics of American society.

That remains the case for underrepresented racial or ethnic groups, who account for roughly 42% of the U.S. population.

In the top 2024 films in 2024, 25% included an underrepresented lead or co-lead, according to Annenberg. In those 25 movies, the lead or co-leads were 38.% Black, 15.4% Asian or Asian American and 3.9% Hispanic.

That was a substantial decrease from 2023, when 37 leads or co-leads were people of color.

“The progress we saw for female-identified leads was not matched by the findings for underrepresented leads,” said Smith. “This downturn signifies a lack of investment in storytelling that reflects the audience as a whole. The reality is that audiences want to see stories about women and people of color — studios and filmmakers do not have to choose between the two.”