Female directors in the film industry are underrepresented and even though ‘Hollywood’s female director problem’ has been the source of discussion over the past years, there have been no major changes in the representation of female directors in the film industry. To narrow the gender gap, media companies simply have to start hiring more female film directors. Apart from the public discussion about women being underrepresented in the film industry, there is another incentive for media companies to narrow this gap: data shows that we prefer movies directed by women.

电影业中女导演的代表性不足，尽管过去几年一直在讨论“好莱坞的女导演问题”，但电影业中女导演的代表性并未发生重大变化。 为了缩小性别差距，媒体公司只需开始雇用更多的女性电影导演。 除了关于电影中女性所占比例不足的公开讨论之外，媒体公司还有另一种动机来缩小这一差距：数据表明，我们更喜欢女性导演的电影。

Existing research on the gender gap in the film industry is focused on the number of female film directors involved in the top 100 or top 1000 Hollywood movies in a specific year. Although these studies confirm the gender gap, they do not answer questions like: Is the gender gap narrowing over time? What about the gender gap in other countries? And from a customer perspective: How are movies directed by women perceived by the audience?

关于电影业中性别差距的现有研究集中于在特定年份中参与好莱坞前100名或前1000名电影的女性电影导演人数。 尽管这些研究证实了性别差距，但它们并未回答以下问题：性别差距会随着时间缩小吗？ 那么其他国家的性别差距又如何呢？ 从客户的角度来看：观众如何看待女性导演的电影？

数据与方法 (Data and methodology)

To answer these questions I started my analysis with a data set that includes all movies listed on the IMDb website with at least 100 votes and published between 1906 and 2019. This results in a total of 81,273 movies. While IMDb lists the name of the director on the website, it does not mention the director’s gender. To determine the film director’s gender, I matched the first name of each film director to the name database of the Social Security Administration of the US government. This database includes all names given to babies born in the US between 1880 and 2019 and the corresponding gender of the babies. I then assigned genders to names based on the frequency of gender for each name, so for example if 100,000 female babies were given the name Julia and only 5 male babies were given the name Julia, I classified the name Julia as female. Of course, I manually checked the film directors with names that can be both male and female, such as Robin (Not everything can be automated with data analytics, unfortunately…). After data cleansing and name matching, the final data set includes 65,996 movies.

为了回答这些问题，我开始使用一个数据集进行分析，该数据集包含IMDb网站上列出的，至少有100票，并于1906年至2019年之间发行的所有电影。结果，总共有81,273部电影。 尽管IMDb在网站上列出了导演的姓名，但并未提及导演的性别。 为了确定电影导演的性别，我将每位电影导演的名字与美国政府社会保障局的名称数据库进行了匹配。 该数据库包括所有在1880年至2019年之间在美国出生的婴儿的姓名以及相应的婴儿性别。 然后，我根据每个名字的性别出现频率为名字分配性别，例如，如果给100,000个婴儿命名为Julia，而只有5个男性命名为Julia，则我将Julia归为女性。 当然，我手动检查了电影导演的名字，该名字可以是男性也可以是女性，例如Robin(不幸的是，并不是所有数据都可以通过数据分析实现自动化)。 数据清理和名称匹配后，最终数据集包括65,996个电影。

性别差距是否随着时间的推移而缩小？ (Is the gender gap narrowing over time?)

The answer to this question is: yes, the gender gap is narrowing, but at a very slow pace. Between 1906 and 1993 the percentage of movies directed by women slightly fluctuated over the years but never reached 10%. Since 1994, the percentage of movies directed by women is over 10% but the milestone of 20% has yet to be reached. It took 88 years to reach the milestone of 10% and it is already taking 25 years to reach the next milestone of 20%.

这个问题的答案是： 是的，性别差距正在缩小，但步伐非常缓慢。 在1906年至1993年之间，女性导演的电影比例在过去几年中略有波动，但从未达到10％。 自1994年以来，女性导演的电影比例已超过10％，但尚未达到20％的里程碑。 达到10％的里程碑花了88年，而达到20％的下一个里程碑已经花了25年。

那么其他国家的性别差距又如何呢？ (What about the gender gap in other countries?)

Hollywood is usually the main focus area for research about the movie industry. If we look at all movies produced since 2010, 42% of movies were fully or partially produced in the USA. Although the production country and film director’s nationality do not have to be the same, it is still interesting to analyze the share of female film directors by (production) country. The USA is definitely behind other countries in terms of female film directors; since 2010, 13% of active film directors are female, while the share of film directors in Finland is 43%. Other European countries are also doing a much better job compared to the USA; the share of female directors in Estonia is 35%, in Bosnia and Herzegovina it is 33%, in Luxembourg 29%, Norway 26%, and in Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands it is also slightly above 20%. However, the total number of film directors in these countries is of course significantly lower compared to the USA. Another large film industry is Bollywood, where 16% of directors are female compared to 13% in Hollywood.

好莱坞通常是电影业研究的主要重点领域。 如果我们看一下自2010年以来制作的所有电影，则有42％的电影全部或部分在美国制作。 尽管制片国和电影导演的国籍不必相同，但分析(制片)国女性电影导演的份额仍然很有趣。 在女性电影导演方面，美国绝对落后于其他国家。 自2010年以来，活跃的电影导演中有13％为女性，而芬兰的电影导演比例为43％。 与美国相比，其他欧洲国家也做得更好。 在爱沙尼亚，女性董事的比例为35％，在波斯尼亚和黑塞哥维那为33％，卢森堡为29％，挪威为26％，德国，瑞典和荷兰也略高于20％。 但是，与美国相比，这些国家的电影导演总数当然要少得多。 另一个大型电影业是宝莱坞，其中16％的导演是女性，而好莱坞是13％。

观众如何看待女性导演的电影？ (How are movies directed by women perceived by the audience?)

Many of us do not really care whether a movie is directed by a man or a woman, we just want to watch good movies and that is exactly why we should all care about female representation in the film industry. Data shows that both men and women give significantly higher ratings to movies directed by women.

我们中的许多人并不真正在意电影是由男人还是女人导演，我们只是想看好电影，这就是为什么我们都应该在电影界关注女性形象的原因。 数据显示，男性和女性对女性导演的电影的评价都高得多。

IMDb ratings are used as a proxy for how movies are perceived by the audience. The histogram chart below shows that these ratings are normally distributed with skewness of -0.68 and kurtosis of 3.58.

IMDb分级可用来代替观众观看电影的方式。 下面的直方图显示，这些等级呈正态分布，偏度为-0.68，峰度为3.58。

The average IMDb rating for movies published between 1906 and 2019 is 6.26 for movies created by female film directors and 6.19 for male film directors. This rating difference of 0.06 is statistically significant at the 1% level and this difference increases in absolute numbers and in significance if we take subsets of the data and look at more recent decades only.

在1906年至2019年之间发行的电影的平均IMDb评分，女性电影导演制作的电影为6.26，男性电影导演为6.19。 在1％的水平上，0.06的评级差异在统计上是显着的，并且如果我们仅收集数据的子集并仅查看最近的几十年，则该绝对值和显着性差异将增加。

The higher ratings for movies directed by female film directors are not driven by female voters only, both male and female voters give higher ratings to movies directed by women.

由女导演导演的电影的较高评级不仅是由女性选民驱动的，男性和女性选民都对由女性导演的电影给予较高的评级。

If we look at genres of movies published since 2010, female film directors get higher ratings in the family, fantasy, and musical genres. While male film directors get significantly higher ratings in the history and mystery genres. Also, men appear to be better in romance (that’s quite a surprise). However, it must be noted that the comparison of genres can be tricky because women are underrepresented in many genres.

如果我们看一下自2010年以来发行的电影类型，女性电影导演在家庭，幻想和音乐类型中会获得更高的评价。 而男性电影导演在历史和神秘类型上的评价要高得多。 另外，男人的浪漫似乎更好(这很令人惊讶)。 但是，必须指出的是，由于女性在许多类型中所占的比例不足，因此比较类型可能会比较棘手。

Film festivals have always been dominated by male film directors. At the Venice film festival, only four nominated movies between 2017 and 2019 were directed by women.

电影节一直由男性电影导演主导。 在威尼斯电影节上，2017年至2019年之间只有四部提名电影是女性导演的。

A spot in competition at the Venice Film Festival can launch careers and Oscar winners, but in recent years, films directed by women have been mostly excluded from vying for the coveted Golden Lion. Among the 62 films that competed between 2017 and 2019, only four were made by women.

威尼斯电影节上的竞争场所可以激发事业和奥斯卡奖的获得者，但近年来，由女性导演的电影大多被竞逐令人垂涎的金狮奖。 在2017年至2019年之间竞争的62部电影中，只有四部是女性制作的。

Things have improved at the 77th edition of the Venice film festival that took place last week, where 44% of the films in competition are directed by women. According to the festival’s director Alberto Barbera, films this year were selected “exclusively on the basis of their quality and not as a result of gender protocols. If both the Venice film festival and IMDb ratings highlight the quality of films directed by women, it is time for Hollywood to start narrowing the gender gap at a much faster pace and across all movie genres.

在上周举行的第77届威尼斯电影节上，情况有所改善，比赛中有44％的电影由女性导演。 根据电影节的导演阿尔贝托·巴贝拉(Alberto Barbera)的说法，今年的电影“是根据影片的质量而不是根据性别规范选择的。 如果威尼斯电影节和IMDb收视率都彰显了女性导演电影的质量，那么好莱坞就该开始以更快的速度缩小所有电影流派的性别差距了。

Thanks for reading!

谢谢阅读！