Long-term patterns of gender imbalance in an industry without ability or level of interest differences

Female representation has been slowly but steadily increasing in many sectors of society. One sector where one would expect to see gender parity is the movie industry, yet the representation of females in most functions within the U.S. movie industry remain surprisingly low. Here, we study the historical patterns of female representation among actors, directors, and producers in an attempt to gain insights into the possible causes of the lack of gender parity in the industry. Our analyses reveals a remarkable temporal coincidence between the collapse in female representation across all functions and the advent of the Studio System, a period when the major Hollywood studios controlled all aspects of the industry. Female representation among actors, directors, producers and writers dropped to extraordinarily low values during the emergence and consolidation of the Studio System that in some cases have not yet recovered to pre-Studio System levels. In order to explore some possible mechanisms behind these patterns, we investigate the association between the gender balance of actors, writers, directors, and producers and a number of economic indicators, movie industry indicators, and movie characteristics. We find robust, strong, and significant associations which are consistent with an important role for the gender of decision makers on the gender balance of other industry functions. While in no way demonstrating causality, our findings add new perspectives to the discussions of the reasons for female under-representation in fields such as computer science and medicine, that have also experienced dramatic changes in female representation.

社会诸多领域中，女性的占比正缓慢却稳步提升。影视行业本应是实现性别平等的领域之一，但美国电影行业多数岗位中女性的占比仍低得令人意外。为此，本研究聚焦演员、导演与制片人三类岗位的女性占比历史变化模式，以期深入探究该行业性别平等缺失的潜在成因。研究分析显示，全岗位女性占比的大幅下滑与制片厂制度（Studio System）的兴起在时间上高度重合——这一时期好莱坞大型制片厂掌控了行业的所有环节。在制片厂制度兴起与巩固的阶段，演员、导演、制片人及编剧群体中的女性占比骤降至极低水平，部分岗位的女性占比至今仍未恢复至制片厂制度实施前的水准。为探究上述现象背后的潜在作用机制，本研究分析了演员、编剧、导演与制片人的性别结构，与多项经济指标、影视行业指标及影片特征之间的关联。研究发现了显著且稳健的强关联，这一结果支持决策者性别对行业其他岗位的性别均衡具有重要影响这一观点。尽管本研究并未证明因果关系，但其研究结果为计算机科学、医学等同样经历了女性占比剧烈变化的领域中，女性代表性不足的成因讨论提供了新视角。