Ava DuVernay directing ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ (Movieweb)

The entertainment industry has made it clear that it’s a man’s world. And now we have data to back it up.

The Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at University of Southern California (USC) put out a study last year through their Media, Diversity & Social Change initiative. The study, titled “Inclusion in the Director’s Chair?,” examined the gender, race and age of directors for the top-grossing 1,000 movies from 2007 to 2016.

Among the interesting findings was the revelation that 80% of women directors made just one film within the 10-year timeframe. This counted them as “one and done.” By contrast, only 54%+ men directed only one film during the same length of time.

The study also called out gender ratios: Across the 1,000 films examined, there were 1,114 directors. (The study did not define if this number was for unique – i.e. only occurring once in the list – directors or not.) The male-to-female director ratio was 24:1.

Across the 1,114 total directors, there were only 35 (!) unique female directors across the stated timeframe. (Ava DuVernay, pictured above, was one of those 35.) That’s 3% of all the directors surveyed. That’s pretty bad!!

Clearly, we have a long way to go before we achieve parity behind the camera.