The Numbers Don't Lie: What the WIFTI Summit, IWD & Women's History Month Are Telling Us to Do Next

It's been more than a month since WIFTI chapters from around the world gathered in Adare, Ireland, for the 2026 WIFTI Summit, International Women's Day has come and gone, and now we’re almost at the end of Women's History Month. But what have we actually learned? What stuck? What still stings? And where do we go from here?

This month, I wanted to take some time to reflect on the ideas and conversations that surround this month and ask you to reflect too. Because the truth is, reflection without action is just a nice feeling, and the data is screaming at us to consider real, actionable change because we simply don't have the luxury of becoming complacent.

Let's Start With the Numbers.

We talk about progress, and we celebrate visible wins. But the data published in the months surrounding the Summit paints a picture that demands systemic change and not just applause.

29% of the top 100 grossing films in 2025 featured female protagonists, down from 42% in 2024. (Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, SDSU, 2026)

Women directed just 13% of the top 250 grossing films in 2025 (The Celluloid Ceiling, SDSU, 2026). Among the top 100, that number drops further to just 8.1%, or 9 out of 111 directors, and only 5.4% of directors were women of color (USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, 2026)

7% of the top 250 films in 2025 employed 10 or more women in key behind-the-scenes roles. Meanwhile, 75% employed 10 or more men. (The Celluloid Ceiling, SDSU, 2026)

7% of composers working on 2025's top 250 films were women, a slight rise from 5%. Cinematographers, by contrast, dropped sharply from 12% to 7%. (The Celluloid Ceiling, SDSU, 2026)

29% of the 2025 Oscar nominations went to women. Non-binary and transgender filmmakers received 0% and 0.4%, respectively. (Women in Film, 2026)

And here's one more number that should silence every “but we've come so far” conversation;

+6%

That is the total increase in women's overall behind-the-scenes representation across the top 250 films. To clarify, that's from 17% in 1998 to 23% in 2025. Six percentage points. In 27 years. (The Celluloid Ceiling, SDSU)

I want all of you to sit with that for a moment.

This is not a pipeline problem or a talent problem. It is a systemic, structural problem.

“Intention without architecture is just noise.” - WIFTI Summit 2026

What the Summit Gave Us.

Over four extraordinary days, WIFTI brought together creatives, industry leaders, advocates, policymakers and allies from across the globe who were all united by a shared commitment to gender equality and meaningful change across the screen industries.

People spoke candidly about what wasn't working, and they called out the systems that protect the status quo. But we need the status quo to start paying attention.

The Themes That Kept Coming Back

• Gender equality must move from intention to action. Urgently. Not pledges. Not panels. Equitable budgets, inclusive hiring practices, and accountability structures embedded into the industry itself.
• Technology is reshaping everything. The people making decisions about AI, virtual production, and digital platforms are not yet representative of the audiences those tools will serve.
• Visibility alone is not enough. As Dr. Martha Lauzen of SDSU has noted for years, 'visibility for a few has not generated employment for many.' Greta Gerwig. Jane Campion. Chloé Zhao. Their wins are real. But the numbers haven't moved.
• Sustainable careers, not just projects. From development to distribution, creators need ongoing structural support and not just a single shot at the gate.
• Place matters. Local investment and regional infrastructure are not peripheral issues — they are the foundation on which international collaborations are built.

"Gender equality must move from intention to action with greater urgency." - WIFTI Summit 2026

Why It All Comes Back to the Decision Makers.

Here is the most compelling data point in all of this:

71% of writers on films with at least one female director were women. Compare that to 11% on films with male directors only. (The Celluloid Ceiling, SDSU, 2026)

22% of cinematographers on films with a female director were women. Versus just 5% on male-directed films. (The Celluloid Ceiling, SDSU, 2026)

28% of editors on films with a female director were women. Versus just 19% on male-directed films. (The Celluloid Ceiling, SDSU, 2026)

When women lead, women get hired. When women get hired, different stories get told, and when different stories get told, different audiences feel seen, and they show up.

The 2026 UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report makes this commercially explicit: studios are leaving money on the table. Films with diverse casts consistently outperform at the box office, and yet the industry continues to retreat from the very practices that drive that performance.

"The industry cannot afford to turn away from women and people of color during this time when the theatrical industry is still struggling." — Ana-Christina Ramón, UCLA Entertainment and Media Research Initiative

This is not a social justice argument alone - although it absolutely is that too. It is a business argument. And we should be making both, very loudly, in every room we enter.

Women Behind the Camera.

Across the globe, WIFT chapters were gathering to mark International Women's Day with exactly this kind of honest reckoning. In Warsaw, WIFT Poland (led by Chapter President & Stage 32 Brand Ambassador, Karolina Rum) co-hosted a panel with Kino Praha titled "Women Behind the Camera," bringing together production coordinator Anna Komosa, editor Anna Luka, production manager Patrycja Kycia, production designer Ewa Mroczkowska, and moderator/journalist Anna Tatarska.

The panel surfaced a question that deserves to sit at the heart of every industry conversation right now:

"What creative territories are we failing to explore simply because a single generation still dominates the decision-making rooms?"

Karolina Rum frames the answer through the lens of intergenerational collaboration, which is a concept she calls not just beneficial, but strategically necessary:

"Intergenerational collaboration is becoming a strategic necessity for a global film market defined by rapid technological shifts, cultural and economic fragmentation, and audiences hungry for authenticity." - Karolina Rum, President, WIFT Poland

Younger creators are bringing fluency in emerging platforms, digital culture, and audience behaviour. Seasoned professionals bring institutional memory, understanding of industry cycles, and the hard-won calm of decades navigating both crisis and success. When these strengths intersect, the room gets bigger than any single generation's experience.

But Karolina is clear about the obstacle: gatekeeping. The industry has long been structured around hierarchical access. Who gets the meeting, who controls financing, who 'gets to fail.' Intergenerational collaboration demands we reimagine gatekeeping not as a barrier but as a bridge.

WIFT Poland is launching RE:INVENT. A structured mentoring exchange that flows both ways, pairing established professionals with emerging creatives in mutual learning. Watch this space for more details.

Story as Resistance: A Conversation with Sophie Hyde

One of the most resonant voices in Australian cinema right now is director Sophie Hyde, whose semi-autobiographical film Jimpa (starring Olivia Colman and John Lithgow) is in Australian cinemas now, distributed by Kismet Movies.

WIFT Vic Vice President Katie Page spoke with Sophie about what it means to bring a deeply personal, queer, intergenerational story to the screen, and their words cut right to the bone of everything we've been discussing.

On the Power of Personal Stories

Jimpa grew from loss and love: Sophie's late father, a provocative gay man driven by social justice, and her child Aud's growing public identity as a trans person. The impulse to create a space for that conversation became the film.

"We very much explore the idea of stories and the multiple truths that can exist and how we create narratives to create meaning." — Sophie Hyde, Director of Jimpa

Sophie's film is itself a proof of concept. Here is an Australian female director, working with Olivia Colman and John Lithgow, making a queer intergenerational story across three countries. It exists. It is in cinemas. And it matters. Not just artistically, but as evidence of what becomes possible when the right people are given the keys.

On Vulnerability as a Creative Model

What Sophie describes about making Jimpa - building trust quickly with new international collaborators, offering something personal, having it met - is genuinely a model for the kind of industry we're trying to build. Reciprocal. Honest. Human.

Sophie’s Advice for Women and Gender-Diverse Filmmakers

"Finding each other, championing each other and holding each other is crucial. Rejecting the desire to shrink or put all our attention on how we look. Helping more people make stories and watching them. Giving a shit. Trying really hard. Not hardening too much." - Sophie Hyde

It sounds radical in its simplicity, but in an industry that has spent decades asking women and gender-diverse people to make themselves smaller, it is radical, and it is exactly the spirit the WIFTI community was built on.

Click here to read the full interview with Sophie Hyde!

What Systemic Change Actually Looks Like

We know the problem. We have the data. What we need now are structural solutions. Here's what the conversations of this past month are pointing toward:

1. Accountability with teeth.

Diversity pledges without enforcement are wallpaper. The industry needs clear, auditable gender targets embedded into funding conditions. Not as a bonus, but as a baseline. France has required productions receiving CNC funding to complete gender-based violence training, with obligations progressively extended to full crews. In Norway, 40% of publicly backed productions are directed by women, and they have now surpassed their own target. These are working models to look at and implement locally.

2. Put women in the director's chair. Deliberately and at scale.

The data is unambiguous. When a woman directs, women get hired across every department. Hiring one woman in the chair is a systemic lever. Funders, studios, and streaming platforms need to treat it as one.

3. Finance films directed by women equitably.

According to France's CNC Gender Equality report, films directed by women had budgets approximately 39% lower than those directed by men in 2024. Lower budgets mean fewer screens, less marketing, and less visibility, which is a cycle that perpetuates the underrepresentation it appears to reflect.

4. Build intergenerational pipelines and not just entry points.

Getting in the door is not enough. Mid-career support, mentorship exchange, and long-term career infrastructure are what turn individuals into an industry.

5. Measure everything.

Although many film institutes have developed GEDI strategies, it's important that we continue to collect data, whether that work is institutionalised or driven independently. We cannot fix what we do not measure. Every chapter, every studio, every funding body needs to be collecting gendered data and making it public.

6. Champion streaming as a frontier.

Women creators on streaming programs rose to 36% in 2024-25, which is a historic high, and almost double the 20% on broadcast. This is where progress is happening. This is the result of deliberate decisions by platforms that treat inclusion as a strategic priority. We need to learn from this, amplify it, and demand the same from theatrical.

Questions That Should Keep You Up at Night

We'd love to hear from you because these are the questions we're sitting with:

• If women directing increases female hiring across every department, why are we not treating female directors as an industry-wide investment priority?
• Who controls the financing at your company, your studio, your funding body and what does their gender breakdown look like?
• What stories are not being told right now because the person who would tell them cannot get in the room?
• In what ways can cross-generational collaboration in your team unlock stories and solutions that no single generation's experience could reach alone?
• What would it look like to move gender equity from a values statement to a contractual obligation in your next project?

What next?

• Find your WIFT chapter: 60+ chapters on six continents working toward the same goal. Join us at wifti.net/membership
• Look out for WIFT Poland's RE:INVENT mentorship program: A mentorship exchange built on mutual learning, launching soon. More details from WIFT Poland coming.
• Access Stage 32 Education: WIFTI members get exclusive access to Stage 32's global education platform. Courses, webinars, and tools built for the modern screen creator.
• Watch Jimpa: Sophie Hyde's queer, intergenerational film is in Australian cinemas now.
• Start a conversation in the comments below: What did this past month spark for you? Share your moment of triumph, your moment of concern, or your call to action in the Stage 32 Lounges. We're listening.

Let's hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Got an idea for a post? Or have you collaborated with Stage 32 members to create a project? We'd love to hear about it. Email Ashley at blog@stage32.com and let's get your post published!

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