Who gets the mic? Women, media, and the leadership gap

My three sons know what I like to watch and listen to, and it usually features strong women's voices.

My youngest son loves action flicks like James Bond and Indiana Jones, and he's accustomed to me pointing out the dearth of strong female characters. Nearly all of his movie choices do not pass the Bechdel test.

Our habits have a gender

Yesterday I saw the new Steven Spielberg flick “Disclosure Day,” and even though the cast was mostly male, I was thrilled to watch two strong women leads who really drove the plot and became heroes in the story.

Although we've made progress since the 1960s, female characters still make up only 37.8% of all on-screen characters and only 31% of speaking characters. They speak half as much as male characters, are nearly five times more likely to be objectified, and are three times more likely to wear sexually revealing clothing compared to men. They're more likely to be younger than 40, more likely to be negatively stereotyped if they're over 50, and less likely to hold prestigious or high-status roles. (Source: GDI Film Study 2024: Representation in Family Films and the Geena Davis Institute research library)

The numbers in music aren't much better. Less than a fifth of the songs men stream come from female or mixed-gender artists compared to about a third for women. An analysis of 330,000 listeners found that on average, a streaming platform (and I’m guessing radio stations, too) plays six tracks by men before landing on a female artist. The algorithm reflects our habits back at us, and our habits have a gender.

Film tells a similar story from the other direction: for nine of the top ten streaming films of 2023, women made up the majority of viewers, but men largely watch stories about themselves.

Present but not prominent

This isn't unique to entertainment. The same pattern shows up in the corner office. Women represent 43% of the global workforce but hold only 31% of leadership positions, and women ran just 11% of Fortune 500 companies in 2025. While entry level representation is 48% women, that number drops to just 29% in the C-suite, a slow attrition that happens at every rung of the ladder.

What happens when women lead

When women lead, the results speak for themselves.

In the two years after a new CEO appointment, companies that appointed women as chief executives outperformed those that appointed men by around 20% in stock price. According to McKinsey, firms with 30% or more women on their executive teams are 27% more likely to outperform on profitability.

Consider Mary Barra, who became the first woman to lead a global automaker when she took the helm at General Motors in 2014. The company posted record global sales and net income in 2015, just one year after she took over, and she has since steered GM through the 2014 ignition switch crisis, COVID-19, and supply chain disruptions, with GM stock up 62% over the past 12 months.

The entertainment industry tells the same story when women get to lead. Some of the most critically acclaimed, commercially successful films and albums of the past decade have centered women's stories and women's voices. A study of 350 top-grossing films found that female-led movies outperformed male-led films at every budget level, and every film that crossed $1 billion at the global box office passed the Bechdel test (remember that low bar?).

In music, the numbers are even harder to ignore. Taylor Swift's Eras Tour became the highest-grossing tour in history, the first ever to break $1 billion in ticket revenue and projected to generate close to $5 billion in the United States alone. The pattern is consistent whether you're looking at a spreadsheet, a stage, or a screen: when women lead, audiences and investors show up.

“Not a fit”

I've seen this play out firsthand. At my last corporate job, I was asked to interview two female candidates for a new HR director position. I felt like a token as one of the senior women in the office, but I couldn't pass up the chance. Both women were outstanding, confident, and intelligent. My boss was put out because one of them supposedly asked for as much money as he was making. (How dare she!) He and the other white men running the company decided the two highly qualified candidates "weren't a fit." You know what that's code for, and so did every woman in that office.

The stories we consume shape what we consider normal, whose leadership we accept without question, and whose competence we doubt. That's why your streaming habits and your hiring decisions aren't as separate as they seem. Expanding what you watch, listen to, and read is practice for expanding what you're willing to see. The evidence is there. The question is whether we're willing to look.

Let’s make your message the one they remember. Fertile Ground Communications transforms complex ideas into clear, compelling messages that capture attention and inspire action. Whether you’re a small business, public agency, or nonprofit, we help your voice break through the clutter and connect authentically with your audience.