Women of Color See Gains in Top-Grossing Movie Roles in 2022

variety.com:

Charna Flam As awards season moves forward, the discussion surrounding how creatives of color and their projects are repeatedly snubbed by awards bodies continues, most recently and notably including Viola Davis’ “The Woman King”; but a new study from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has noticed an increase for women of color in leading roles across the top-grossing movies of 2022.

Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative conducted a new research study examining the gender, race, ethnicity and age of lead and co-lead actors across the 100 top-grossing movies each year from 2007 to 2022, in the Inequality Across 1,600 Popular Films: Examining Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Age of Leads/Co-Leads From 2007 to 2022 study.

The study found that throughout 2022, women of color were either leads or co-leads in a total of 16% of the 100 top-grossing films.

This is an increase from 2021, which totaled 11%. The 16-year study discovered that 2022 had the highest number of underrepresented women and non-binary people as leads and co-leads. “The progress for women of color in leading roles is encouraging,” said Dr.