Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Rent the Runway is giving away one-month subscriptions to women who celebrate career wins on LinkedIn, a pediatrician in Flint, Mich., raised millions in cash aid for new moms, and Fortune‘s Ellie Austin shares her new feature on how influential stars are becoming CEOs so they can reshape Hollywood. Have a wonderful Wednesday.
– Star power. At first glance, we’re in a golden age of on-screen representation for women of all ages and races. Although Barbie’s two most prominent women, director Greta Gerwig and the film’s star and producer Margot Robbie, were respectively snubbed by this year’s Academy Awards, the film—and its message of women achieving autonomy in a world run by men—has dominated both the box office and the cultural zeitgeist since its release in July. Ryan Gosling’s showstopper performance of “I’m Just Ken” was also a high point of Sunday’s Oscars ceremony, despite the movie only taking home one award—Best Original Song.
Barbie aside, TV series and films made by and about women are more common than they were even a few years ago. Expats, Bad Sisters, Feud, Yellowjackets, and the fourth series of True Detective are only some of the recent shows to star female ensemble casts.
And yet, depressingly, the data tells a grim story when it comes to gender equality in Hollywood. For a recent Fortune feature, I spoke to female power players in the industry, including actress and producer Connie Britton; actress, writer, and director Lena Waithe; Hello Sunshine CEO Sarah Harden; and Stacy L. Smith, founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, a think tank researching diversity and inclusion in entertainment.
Smith is one of the writers of a study released last month showing that only 30 of 2023’s 100 top-grossing films featured women and girls in lead or co-lead roles. Worryingly, that figure is the same as it was in 2010 and a marked drop from 2022, when 44 of the year’s most popular films had female leads. Behind the scenes, the situation is similarly inequitable: A different study published this year by Smith and her colleagues revealed that only 12.1% of directors attached to 2023’s top-grossing films were women.
Within this context, influential women in Hollywood are devising new strategies to disrupt traditional power dynamics behind and in front of the camera. These include mentorship programs, the use of social media to boost the value of “intellectual property” created by women, and the launch of production companies focused on bringing diverse stories about women and minorities to the screen.
“My company is constantly trying to expand the thinking and the understanding that women are not the only ones who are going to watch shows that feature women,” Britton told me. Her company, Deep Blue Productions, is working on a range of projects including a makeover reality-style show starring single mothers. The first network interested in the series wanted “table-flipping” drama, whereas Britton envisioned an honest, empathetic look at the reality of single parenting. She is now working with a different network. “Suffice to say, I will not quit until the show is on the air,” she says.
Read my full feature here.
Ellie Austin
[email protected]
@Ellie_Austin_
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