Variety: Women Directors Still Rare in Hollywood

The Hollywood community prides itself on speaking up for equal rights and diversity. The industry’s reality is far different from its rhetoric.

Not only does Hollywood suffer from a severe lack of diversity, the number of women behind the camera remains at a shockingly low rate.

Four years after Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the directing Oscar for “The Hurt Locker,” the industry still has a terrible track record on gender equality behind the camera. As we head into awards season, the Oscar buzz is all about the guys (see Alfonso Cuaron, Steven McQueen, David O. Russell, Paul Greengrass, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Spike Jonze, etc.).

Women did not direct any tentpole features in 2013 with the exception of Disney’s animated “Frozen,” made by the duo Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee….

In 2011, 5 percent of the top-grossing 250 films were directed by women; in 2012, it was 9 percent, according to a study by San Diego State U.’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. But those numbers, as bad as they are, get worse when you consider big-budget releases. Variety found that in 2013, only two of the top-grossing 100 movies of the year were directed by women.

Diversity woes aren’t just a big screen concern.

Yet, according to the study, released on Oct. 8 at the 27th annual National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications conference in New York, ethnic minorities and women remain woefully underrepresented on both cable and broadcast programs as lead actors, writers and show creators.