Diversity

Last year, women made up just 13% of directors working on the top 250 films.

That level represents a 3-percentage-point decline from 2024, when women led 16% of the top-grossing movies, according to a San Diego State University study released Thursday.

The troubling tabulation comes as Hollywood seeks to turn the page from a gut-punching year that included the Los Angeles wildfires, ongoing declines of local film and television production and the deaths of beloved filmmakers.

“Hamnet,” directed by Chloé Zhao; “Freakier Friday,” helmed by Nisha Ganatra; and “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” led by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, were among the few notable exceptions.

The university’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film and its founder Martha M. Lauzen have tracked employment of women in behind-the-scenes decision-making jobs for nearly three decades. Roles included in the study are: directors, writers, executive producers, producers, editors and cinematographers. Data from more than 3,500 credits on top-grossing films were used to compile the report.

Lauzen launched her effort in 1998, assuming that pointing out the imbalance would cause doors to swing open for women in Hollywood. But despite countless calls for action, and a high-profile but short-lived federal investigation, the picture has stayed largely the same.

“The numbers are remarkably stable,” Lauzen said in an interview. “They’ve been remarkably stable for more than a quarter of a century.”

Overall, women made up 23% of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors and directors of photography on the 250 top-grossing films in 2025, according to Lauzen’s report: “The Celluloid Ceiling: Employment of Behind-the-Scenes Women on Top Grossing U.S. Films.” In 2024 and 2020, the percentage was the same.

Her study found that, in 2025, women constituted 28% of film producers and 23% of the executive producers.

Among the ranks of screenwriters, only 20% were women.

Women also made up 20% of editors, matching the level in 1998, when Lauzen began her study.

“There’s been absolutely no change,” she said.

Among cinematographers, women occupied just 7% of those influential roles on the 250 top-grossing films.

The cinematographer serves as the director of photography, greatly shaping the look and the feel of a film. Last year marked a stark decline from 2024, when women constituted 12% of cinematographers.

There has been movement in the number of female directors since 1998. That year, only 7% of the top-grossing films were directed by women. Last year’s total represented a 6 percentage-point improvement.

Lauzen’s most recent report comes a decade after the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began looking at alleged gender discrimination in Hollywood. But the 2015 review, which was sparked by a request from the American Civil Liberties Union, failed to get traction. A little more than a year later, President Obama left office and President Trump ushered in a sea change in attitudes.

Hollywood employment also has become more unstable in recent years because of a pullback in production by the major studios during the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes.

Despite years of industry leaders vocalizing a need for greater diversity in executive suites and decision-making roles, and the chronic inequity remaining a punchline for award show jokes, the climate has changed.

Trump returned to office less than a year ago and immediately called for the end of diversity and inclusion programs.

Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, abolished diversity programs within his agency and launched investigations into Walt Disney Co.’s and Comcast’s internal hiring programs. Carr wants to end programs he sees as disadvantaging white people.

Paramount, led by tech scion David Ellison, agreed to dismantle all diversity and inclusion programs at the company, which includes CBS and Comedy Central, as a condition for winning FCC approval for the Ellison family’s takeover of Paramount. That merger was finalized in August.

Lauzen said she’s unsure what her future studies may find.

Corporate consolidation has added to the uncertainty.

Warner Bros., a signature Hollywood studio for more than a century, is on the auction block.

Last month, Warner Bros. Discovery’s board agreed to sell the film and television studios, HBO and HBO Max to Netflix in an $82.7-billion deal. However, the Ellisons’ Paramount is contesting Warner’s choice and has launched a hostile takeover bid, asking investors to tender their Warner shares to Paramount.

“Consolidation now hangs over the film industry like a guillotine, with job losses likely and the future of the theatrical movie-going experience in question,” Lauzen wrote in her report.

“Add the current political war on diversity, and women in the film industry now find themselves in uncharted territory,” Lauzen wrote. “Hollywood has never needed permission to exclude or diminish women, but the industry now has it.”

WASHINGTON — The Senate gave final passage Wednesday to an annual military policy bill that will authorize $901 billion in defense programs while pressuring Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to provide lawmakers with video of strikes on alleged drug boats in international waters near Venezuela.

The annual National Defense Authorization Act, which raises troop pay by 3.8%, gained bipartisan backing as it moved through Congress. It passed the Senate on a 77-20 vote before lawmakers planned to leave Washington for a holiday break. Two Republicans — Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee — and 18 Democrats voted against the bill.

The White House has indicated that it is in line with President Trump’s national security priorities. However, the legislation, which ran more than 3,000 pages, revealed some points of friction between Congress and the Pentagon as the Trump administration reorients its focus away from security in Europe and toward Central and South America.

The bill pushes back on recent moves by the Pentagon. It demands more information on boat strikes in the Caribbean, requires that the U.S. maintain its troop levels in Europe and sends some military aid to Ukraine.

But overall, the bill represents a compromise between the parties. It implements many of Trump’s executive orders and proposals on eliminating diversity and inclusion efforts in the military and grants emergency military powers at the U.S. border with Mexico. It also enhances congressional oversight of the Department of Defense, repeals several years-old war authorizations and seeks to overhaul how the Pentagon purchases weapons as the U.S. tries to outpace China in developing the next generation of military technology.

“We’re about to pass, and the president will enthusiastically sign, the most sweeping upgrades to DOD’s business practices in 60 years,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Still, the sprawling bill faced objections from both Democratic and Republican leadership on the Senate Commerce Committee. That’s because the legislation allows military aircraft to obtain a waiver to operate without broadcasting their precise location, as an Army helicopter had done before a midair collision with an airliner in Washington, D.C., in January that killed 67 people.

“The special carve-out was exactly what caused the January 29 crash that claimed 67 lives,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said at a news conference this week.

Cruz said he was seeking a vote on bipartisan legislation in the next month that would require military aircraft to use a precise location sharing tool and improve coordination between commercial and military aircraft in busy areas.

Boat strike videos

Republicans and Democrats agreed to language in the defense bill that threatened to withhold a quarter of Hegseth’s travel budget until he provided unedited video of the strikes, as well as the orders authorizing them, to the House and Senate Committees on Armed Services.

Hegseth was on Capitol Hill on Tuesday ahead of the bill’s passage to brief lawmakers on the U.S. military campaign in international waters near Venezuela. The briefing elicited contrasting responses from many lawmakers, with Republicans largely backing the campaign and Democrats expressing concern about it and saying they had not received enough information.

The committees are investigating a Sept. 2 strike — the first of the campaign — that killed two people who had survived an initial attack on their boat. The Navy admiral who ordered the “double-tap” strike, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, also appeared before the committees shortly before the vote Wednesday in a classified briefing that also included video of the strike in question.

Several Republican senators emerged from the meeting backing Hegseth and his decision not to release the video publicly, but other GOP lawmakers stayed silent on their opinion of the strike.

Democrats are calling for part of the video to be released publicly and for every member of Congress to have access to the full footage.

“The American people absolutely need to see this video,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “I think they would be shocked.”

Congressional oversight

Lawmakers have been caught by surprise by the Trump administration several times in the last year, including by a move to pause intelligence sharing with Ukraine and a decision to reduce U.S. troop presence in NATO countries in eastern Europe. The defense legislation requires that Congress be kept in the loop on decisions like those going forward, as well as when top military brass are removed.

The Pentagon is also required, under the legislation, to keep at least 76,000 troops and major equipment stationed in Europe unless NATO allies are consulted and there is a determination that such a withdrawal is in U.S. interests. Roughly 80,000 to 100,000 U.S. troops are usually present on European soil. A similar requirement keeps the number of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea at 28,500.

Lawmakers are also pushing back on some Pentagon decisions by authorizing $400 million for each of the next two years to manufacture weapons to be sent to Ukraine.

Cuts to diversity and climate initiatives

Trump and Hegseth have made it a priority to purge the military of material and programs that address diversity, anti-racism or gender issues, and the defense bill codifies many of those changes. It would repeal diversity, equity and inclusion offices and trainings, including the position of chief diversity officer. Those cuts would save the Pentagon about $40 million, according to the Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee.

The U.S. military has long found that climate change is a threat to how it provides national security because weather-related disasters can destroy military bases and equipment. But the bill makes $1.6 billion in cuts by eliminating climate change-related programs at the Pentagon.

Repeal of war authorizations and Syria sanctions

Congress is writing a closing chapter to the war in Iraq by repealing the authorization for the 2003 invasion. Now that Iraq is a strategic partner of the U.S., lawmakers in support of the provision say the repeal is crucial to prevent future abuses. The bill also repeals the 1991 authorization that sanctioned the U.S.-led Gulf War.

The rare, bipartisan moves to repeal the legal justifications for the conflicts signal a potential appetite among lawmakers to reclaim some of Congress’ war powers.

Groves writes for the Associated Press.