Women lost ground both on-screen and behind the scenes during the 2025-26 television season, according to a new study . For example, the percentage of female creators dropped to where it was nearly a decade ago. Yet, this year’s Emmy nominations suggest that when women do get opportunities, their work stands out.

The study from the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University analyzed original U.S. dramas, comedies and reality programs from the 2025-26 season on broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW) and streaming services (Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock). The researchers examined one randomly selected episode from each series included in the study. In total, they analyzed more than 2,500 characters and over 3,600 credits.

Female Creators Lose Ground

They found that the percentage of female creators with shows on streaming services fell sharply from last year, dropping 12 percentage points from 36% in 2024–25 to 24%. On broadcast networks, the percentage of women creators also declined slightly, from 20% to 19%. The percentage of female creators on both streaming and broadcast has fallen back to below where it stood nearly a decade ago, in 2017–18.

Female creators provide the world with a woman’s viewpoint, and they also hire other women to work behind the scenes. Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film and lead researcher on the study, says, “When a program has at least one female creator, the show also employs higher percentages of women as directors, writers, and editors than programs with exclusively male creators.” And the differences are stark. On programs that had at least one female creator, women comprised 22% of directors, 48% of writers, and 33% of editors. On programs with exclusively male creators, women accounted for 14% of directors, 17% of writers, and 25% of editors.

Despite their small numbers, female creators seem to outperform their overall representation when it comes to Emmy recognition . For Outstanding Comedy Series, four of the eight nominated series had at least one female creator, including Abbott Elementary , Hacks , Nobody Wants This and Widow’s Bay. And The Diplomat , which was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series, was also created by a woman.

So, even though women account for only 22% of creators across streaming and broadcast series, they created or co-created 31% of this year’s Emmy-nominated comedy and drama series. The number of Emmy nominations has increased from last year, when women created or co-created 25% of the Emmy-nominated comedy and drama series.

Lauzen says the greater representation of women creators among Emmy-nominated comedies fits a long-standing pattern in television. “Television programming has a long history of being more welcoming to women in comedy than drama,” she explains. Historically, she says, women broke through earlier in comedy, with shows like I Love Lucy and Our Miss Brooks . Dramas starring women took much longer to receive the same resources as those starring men.

Female Directors Decline Too

Women accounted for only 20% of directors, down from 25% last year. However, much like the creators, the female directors received more than their share of Emmy nominations. Women received five of the 12 nominations for Outstanding Director in the comedy and drama series categories, for Hacks , The Ms. Pat Show , The Gilded Age, Paradise and Task . That means women received 42% of the Emmy nominations, even though they accounted for only 20% of the directors. The number of nominations is also up from last year when women received a third of the nominations in these categories.

Women also had less representation on screen, accounting for only 44% of speaking characters, down 2 percentage points from the previous year. In addition, women accounted for only 44% of major characters, down 5 percentage points from the previous year.

Older Women Remain Scarce On Screen

Older women were particularly scarce on screen. Just 28% of major female characters were 40 or older, compared to 51% of major male characters. The gap grew even larger among characters 60 and older, with major male characters in this group outnumbering their female counterparts three to one. That’s the reverse of the real-world population where, among Americans 60 and older , women outnumber men and make up 54% of the age group.

Older women may be scarce on television overall, but they are well represented among Emmy nominees. Women 60 and older received five Emmy acting nominations in the comedy and drama categories this year, with Jean Smart, Lisa Kudrow, Dale Dickey, Michelle Pfeiffer and Allison Janney all receiving nods. That’s exactly the same number as men 60 and older, despite the relatively small number of roles for women in that age group.

Too Soon To Call It A Negative Trend

Across almost every measure, women lost ground this year, with declines among creators, speaking roles and major characters. But Lauzen cautions against concluding from a single year that progress is moving backward.

After tracking women in television and film for nearly three decades, Lauzen says she has seen strong years followed by surprisingly weak ones. “In order to determine whether this is the start of a longer-term trend in women’s employment, we’ll need to see what happens in the next couple of years,” she says.

The winners of the Emmy Awards will be announced on Monday, September 14th.