A study released this week shows that progressive Hollywood is not so progressive when it comes to women on television.
Something called “Boxed In” looked at some 2,500 television roles and 3,600 crew credits throughout the 2025-2026 TV season and found that, although leftists have total control of the entertainment industry and loads of women are in positions of power, the number of “women creating shows across streaming plummeted from 36 percent in 2024-25 to 24 percent in 2025-26[.]”
The number of female TV creators jumped from 27 percent in 2023 to 36 percent the following year. Those gains have all been reversed.
“The numbers of women creating shows on both platforms are now lower than they were almost a decade ago in 2017-18,” Dr. Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, told the far-left Hollywood Reporter.
Normal People would describe that reversal this way: After ten years in Woke TV Hell, the planet appears to be healing.
The study also found that the percentage of female characters in major roles dipped last year. “For streaming,” the study shows, “women comprised 44 percent of major characters in 2025-26, down from 49 percent in 2024-25[.]” As far as broadcast television, there was no significant decline. Women in major roles made up 46 percent of TV shows this year compared to 47 percent last year.
The study also looked at the age of male and female characters and discovered the gobsmacking news that “the majority of women in speaking roles were in their 20s and 30s, while the majority of men were in their 30s and 40s.”
Oh, you mean human nature is still human nature? You mean guys still like to look at young chicks, and women still like to long for mature men?
More from Dr. Lauzen:
The emphasis on youth for the majority of female characters foregrounds their appearance, whereas males are able to credibly age into positions of personal and public power, normalizing the perception that men are naturally more powerful than women. The fully-realized characters played by Kathy Bates on Matlock or Jean Smart on Hacks remain the exception, not the rule, for women on television.
She lost me in the middle part.
Other than Better Call Saul, which was very good, I stopped watching any new TV shows right around 2009. There is so much great TV from the past to watch and re-watch; I see no reason to expose myself to a creatively bankrupt medium where I’m exposed to woke lectures and hairy guys necking.