Telling the Story Behind Hollywood’s Gender Gap Through Data

This project began with a vast dataset, spanning 120 years of filmmaking with more than 30 categories. Deciphering a dataset of this scale requires more than statistical analysis; it requires storytelling through data. Effective visualization isn’t about showing all the data. It’s about uncovering the most meaningful patterns and presenting them in a way that users can instantly understand.

My goal was to determine: What is the most crucial story buried inside this dataset? After analyzing actor counts, gender distribution, release years, and genre-level patterns, one narrative emerged overwhelmingly clearly: the persistent gender gap in Hollywood.

Across more than a century of film, the imbalance is striking. Men consistently account for 60–65% of casts, a pattern that barely shifts over decades. Female representation rarely exceeds 30–35%, even within genres considered more balanced. Genres such as Action, Crime, Western, and War are the most male-dominated, often featuring casts above 70% male. Only a small number of genres, like Romance or Music, even approach gender parity.

Once the core insight was clear, the design challenge became: How do I present this story to the user in a single, intuitive, one-page dashboard? The resulting visualization uses three coordinated views to highlight the imbalance from different angles: overall actor counts, gender representation over time, and genre-level breakdowns. Each visual is intentionally simple, emphasizing contrast and pattern over complexity. A user arriving at the dashboard should not need to search for meaning—the story reveals itself immediately through color, proportion, and layout.

By curating this massive dataset into a clear narrative, the dashboard transforms raw numbers into an accessible insight: The gender gap in film is not only real—it is consistent, measurable, and persistent across genres and decades.