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Streaming Services Lead The Way For Women In TV

Kim Elsesser

A new report finds that TV streaming services are leading the way offering women more quality roles both on-screen and behind the scenes. It’s not all good news though, the report finds that women still trail behind men in most areas and continue to be stereotyped on screen.

The report from San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film examined over 4,100 television characters and more than 4,200 behind-the-scenes credits. They found that programs appearing on streaming services like Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV+ and Disney+ offer more quality roles for women. In fact, programs on these streaming services were just as likely to feature a female protagonist as a male protagonists.  Telling stories from a woman’s perspective is less common on broadcast and cable television, and across all platforms more programs (37%)  still had a male protagonist than a female (29%). 

Behind the scenes is a different story. Men still outnumber women in these roles and many programs sadly have no women at all in the key behind-the-scenes positions. Across all platforms, 94% of the programs had no female directors of photography, 81% had no female editors, 76% had no female directors, and 73% had no female creators. Once again, the streaming services employed the most women behind-the-scenes, and women comprised 35% of all creators, directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and directors of photography on streaming programs. Only 30% of these roles were held by women on broadcast programs, and only 31% on cable programs.

Why is it important to have women in these key roles? The researchers found that programs with at least one female executive producer featured more female protagonists, and more women in other behind-the-scenes positions, than programs with exclusively male executive producers. In other words, having one woman led to the hiring of more women.

Although the situation is improving, programming still reflects stereotypes that suggest women’s role is at home and men’s is in the workforce. Male characters were more likely than female characters to have an identifiable job, and men were more also more likely than women to be seen at work and actually doing work. Women were more likely than men to play roles related to their personal life, like wife and mother, while men were more likely to play work-oriented roles such as business executive or attorney. Viewers were also more likely to know the marital status of female characters than that of male characters. 

Not surprisingly, the female characters also tended to be younger than the male characters, with the majority of female characters in their 20s and 30s. Only 30% of female characters were 40 years old and over, but 45% of males fell into the 40 and over age category. And a larger percentage of male characters (8%) than female characters (3%) are aging into their 60s and beyond. 

Estimates suggest that people watch over three hours of television a day, so these programs can really shape our perceptions of men and women. The characters we see on television can either perpetuate and reinforce stereotypes or begin to break them down. If we typically see male characters conducting business, that’s who we’ll expect to see in the board room in the real world. The first step toward change is to increase the representation of women on the screen. Although change is occurring, it’s far too slow. Women make up half the population, but last year, women accounted for only 43% of all speaking characters across all programs, and that’s down 2% from the previous year. In fact, little change has occurred since the late 1990s. We need to do better.

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