movies

It is the first teo for sure, maybe the third.

We have the inertia of past directors being prinarily men. That means to pool of established directors that are likely to be picked for a bigger budget movie that will receive a ton of advertising will be men.

Second, even with DEI the culture of most cultures simply defers to tall men for the most part, even when it is subconcious. So a pitch for a movie will just end up leaning towards men on top of the ratio of available directors because the people funding movies are likely older men who have concious or inconcious biases.

I'm sure most people pay little attention to the director outside of well known names. The well known names tend to be men, because they have probably been making movies for a couple decades in the current environment. I'm sure there is a mix of people who are interested or turned away from a film if a woman is directing, but I have no idea how much of it is because it is a woman by iteself or because of being marketed as being directed by a woman. Barbie was a massive success, so it isn't like being directed by a woman is a complete dealbreaker, but while big budget action movies that dominate the box office are directed by men who have become houshold names the ratio will stay skewed.

Even if society leaned hard into DEI it would take decades to reach any semblance of balance.