Despite making up half the population, only one-third of speaking roles in 2025’s Top 100 grossing movies were women. This according to the latest study from Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, “Inequality in 1,900 Films.”
The dataset begins in 2007, and across those 19 years, the number of female speaking roles has hovered around one-third in Hollywood’s highest-grossing movies. Last year’s figure was 33.6%, identical to 2024’s number and up from 2023’s 31.7%. The highest percentage of female speaking roles in the nearly two decades that USC Annenberg has been tracking came in 2022, with 34.6%.
Broken down by genre, women had the most speaking roles in comedies in 2025 with 38.7%, compared to 28.6% of characters in animation and 30.4% in action/adventure.
“While we’ve seen pockets of progress for women on screen, the pace of change has been slow. Year after year, many of the same patterns remain,” said Dr. Smith. “Incremental improvement is important for achieving meaningful transformation, but after nearly 2 decades of research and advocacy from many groups, it is clear that the industry is content to wait for change to find them rather than pursuing solutions.”
Of the top 100 grossing films in 2025, nine of the directors were women — an increase from only three in 2007, but less than the 16 reached in 2024. Across all 19 years, 7% of all directors were women.
Women writers and producers filled 16% and 24.4% of their respective roles in 2025, and the greatest change was observed for women composers, where it grew from zero in 2007 to 8.5% in 2025.
There has been progress made in terms of racial representation. In 2025, 41.5% of all speaking or named characters were from an underrepresented racial/ethnic group, reaching proportional representation, the fourth time in 19 years that this has occurred. Since 2007, the percentage of white characters fell by 19.1 percentage points.
Still, 30 movies did not have any Black characters, 46 were missing Hispanic/Latino characters, and 26 did not have any Asian characters.
Nearly one-quarter of directors were from an underrepresented racial/ethnic group in 2025, a significant gain from 2007 (12.5%), but on par with 2024 (23.2%).
LGBTQ+ representation remained static overall from 2024 with than 1% of all speaking characters in 2025 from the community. Not one transgender character appeared on screen in the top films of 2025.
The percentage of characters with a disability remained stable in 2025 at 2.8%.
“Nineteen years of data show that change is possible, but they also show how fragile that progress can be,” said Dr. Smith. “This is not the first time this report has shown that meaningful gains are followed by a return to business as usual. At a moment when the industry is redefining its future, inclusion can be part of the solution, not a casualty of contraction. The question is no longer whether the industry can change. It’s whether it will.”
