A few months ago, Elizabeth Kaiden and Nitza Wilon of The Writers Lab approached me with a question: “What percentage of films are written by women over 40?”
So I turned to knowledge to see what I could discover. I looked at the age and author of the other people’s 38,803 writing credits, in 16,624 live-action fiction feature films. There is a more detailed method in the Notes segment at the end of this article.
I’ve written a lot about gender in film over the years, so I’m not going to address all the main points here. However, we’ll talk about the main figures and you’ll find links to in-depth analysis later. the article.
In the 1970s, fewer than one in ten writers was a woman, while by 2010 that number had doubled to one in five. In 2022, it peaked at 25%, meaning it is still under-indexed by the general population.
It’s smart to see how it builds up over time, but it’s worrying that it’s so slow.
I used public resources to figure out the birth dates of as many writers as possible and ended up gaining knowledge on about 70% of script credits.
During the twentieth century, the average age of screenwriters remained constant, around 44 years old, however, around 2005 it began to increase, going from 43. 3 to 50. 4 years in 2023.
Jerry Seinfeld quipped, “Forty is when, in spite of everything, you come to your senses and your body starts to fall apart. Between the ages of 40 and sixty, I would say, this is your peak. That’s when you know the most, do what you notice the most, what you perceive the most, and still have some physical energy.
One of the main factors in the increase in the average age of writers has been the increase in hiring people over 40. For most of the time I studied, those over 40 accounted for 50% to 60% of writers, while in 2023, this proportion rose to 78. 4% of credits.
So we know that most writers are men and that most writers are over 40 years old. But how do these two facts intersect? And how have things been replaced over time?
The average age of female writers has been lower than that of men for almost all the years I studied. This will still be true in 2023, when the average screenwriter is 46. 7 years old and the average man is 51. 3 years old.
If we divide age and sex, we see that the most dramatic changes have occurred among men under 40 years of age. In 2000, they accounted for 43. 6% of screenwriters’ credits, while by 2023, this proportion had dropped to just 14. 4%.
During the same period, the percentage of screenplay credits going to men over 40 increased from 42. 8% to 66. 0%.
I think it will be less difficult to break down the same knowledge we have above into 4 separate charts. First, men.
And now women. You have to zoom in on the vertical axis, the numbers are much smaller than for men.
So, in reaction to our initial question, in 2023, 12. 4% of screenplay credits went to women over 40. This represents an increase from a few percentages in the late 20th century, but it is still far below the real world. representation.
It’s seeing the emergence of older screenwriters, especially since they were almost absent in the twentieth century. However, older women still make up a smaller percentage of active screenwriters than the general population.
This raises a number of key questions:
Today’s studios began with 38,803 writing credits from 16,624 live-action fiction feature films released between 1955 and 2023 that grossed at least $1 at the U. S. box office. U. S. In some classifications, I reduced the time era because there were far fewer films and outliers. played a much more important role.
30,431 writing credits exceeded this threshold. It should be noted that all deed credits are valid. I just tried to focus on the kind of credits that best reflect the industry’s hiring practices, so adding William Shakespeare or Charles Dickens as screenwriters wouldn’t be relevant.
The knowledge for this study comes from public resources such as IMDb, OMDb, Wikipedia, Google, The-Numbers, and the actors’ own websites. In total, I was able to determine the age and gender of 66. 9% of the writing credits. The trend will likely be skewed toward the most prominent and hired writers.
Gender is decided through pronouns in biographies, online classifications (e. g. , some movie knowledge bases separate “actors” and “actresses”), and my previous paintings on gender. I have divided gender statistics into two categories (e. g. , “men” and “women”) because this reflects how knowledge was collected during the era I studied. In the future, there will possibly be more nuanced knowledge bases that capture gender fluidity and non-binary identities, but until then, we will stick with a rudimentary binary approach. I used the gender that the user identifies with publicly today. I’m looking for bigger, more detailed strategies for researching and reporting on the genre. If you think I can do more, touch us and we can talk.
Stephen Follows is a well-known knowledge researcher in the film industry whose paintings have appeared in The New York Times, The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Evening Standard, Newsweek, The New Statesman, AV. Club. and IndieWire. Il has acted as an industry representative and guest on BBC Radio 4’s The Business of Film series, which topped iTunes podcast charts, and has represented a wide variety of clients, including the Smithsonian in Washington.