South Indian film industry lags in women leadership roles, shows data

The South Indian film industry lags Bollywood and other non-South Indian language cinemas in terms of women serving as heads of departments (HoDs) in various stages of filmmaking and streaming series production, according to a recently released report.

 

The fourth edition of the report titled O Womaniya! reveals a decline in the representation of women HoDs in Telugu films, dropping from 5 per cent in 2021 to 3 per cent in 2023.  

Kannada films fared no better, with no women-led departments recorded. Tamil and Malayalam cinema maintained a static 6 per cent share each, while Bollywood reported a comparatively higher figure of 21 per cent in 2023. Overall, the representation of women as department heads rose only marginally from 8 per cent in 2020 to 15 per cent in 2023. The report examined five key departments for women’s leadership: production design, writing, editing, direction, and cinematography.     

Among these, 24 per cent of production design and 18 per cent of editing roles were held by women, whereas cinematography saw the lowest representation at just 7 per cent. The report also highlighted a troubling trend in gender disparity within senior management roles.     

 

Representation of women in top positions (e.g., directors and chief experience officers) across 25 major media and entertainment companies fell from 13 per cent in 2023 to 12 per cent in 2024. However, there was considerable progress in the adoption of gender-positive corporate policies, with the exception of proactive recruitment for leadership roles, which declined from 44 per cent in 2021 to 40 per cent in 2023.

 

On a brighter note, women received 29 per cent of the talk time in trailers for the surveyed film properties, a 2 per cent increase from the previous year. Similarly, 52 per cent of the films assessed in 2023 passed the Bechdel test, up from 47 per cent in 2022.