ReFrame Report Shows Gender-Balance Gains Slip on TV’s Biggest Shows

ReFrame’s latest annual report, compiled in partnership with WIF, found that 42 of the 100 most popular television series of the 2025-2026 season earned the organization’s ReFrame Stamp for gender-balanced hiring. That is a three-percentage-point decline from the prior season, making this one of the clearest signals yet that the progress television has made on inclusive hiring is not moving in a straight line.

WIF CEO Kirsten Schaffer was blunt about what the numbers show. “It confirms what I think a lot of people are witnessing, experiencing, which is that we are backsliding on gender balance,” she said. Schaffer also noted that the industry is producing fewer television shows than in recent years, but she argued that contraction alone does not explain the drop. The ReFrame Stamp is based on percentages, not raw volume, so the share of shows with balanced hiring should not automatically fall just because there are fewer series being made. “Even though there are fewer television shows being made right now across the industry,” she said, “this is based on percentages, so the percentages should still stay there.”

ReFrame, founded by the Sundance Institute and WIF in 2017, awards its stamp to productions that hire enough women, nonbinary people and trans people in significant creative and production roles. The organization uses a point system to determine whether a show qualifies. Key positions include showrunner, lead actor, co-lead actor, director and various department heads. The stamp is not meant to be an impossible ideal. In ReFrame’s own framing, it is a relatively achievable benchmark for whether a series is spreading power and opportunity across gender lines. That is why Schaffer said the latest results are so troubling. “We think we’ve made it relatively easy to get,” she said, “and so the fact that the numbers are moving backward rather than forwards is really an issue. We’re looking for forward progress.”

This year’s report found a clear decrease in representation in major roles. Only 39 women, nonbinary people or trans people played lead roles across the season’s top 100 series. That is down from 44 in the previous television season and represents the lowest number in seven years. The decline was not limited to lead roles. The report also found that women of color and nonbinary and trans people of color appeared less often in co-lead roles. In the 2024-2025 season, 55 percent of the most popular series included at least one woman of color, nonbinary person of color or trans person of color in a crucial supporting role. This latest season, that figure fell to 47 percent.

For an industry that has spent years promising to put more diverse stories and storytellers at the center of mainstream television, these numbers are an uncomfortable reminder that those promises are not always reflected in hiring decisions. The ReFrame Stamp was designed to make those decisions more visible, and the report’s findings suggest that some of the enthusiasm for gender-balanced hiring has faded as the broader entertainment business has become more cautious, more cost-conscious and more focused on franchise titles and proven formats.

Behind the camera, the report showed a mixed picture. The number of showrunners who are women, nonbinary people or trans people ticked up slightly, from 29 in the previous season to 31 in the 2025-2026 season. That is an improvement, but the overall number remains strikingly low and demonstrates how much room there is for growth in one of the most powerful jobs in television. Writing rooms also made modest gains. The number of top series that had at least half their episodes written by women or nonbinary people rose from 49 to 51. Directors, however, moved in the opposite direction. Only 32 series had at least half their episodes directed by women, nonbinary people or trans people, down from 38 in the previous season.

The report’s crew data was similarly uneven. Representation among first assistant directors fell by seven percent, production designers by four percent, and directors of photography by three percent. Some other below-the-line categories improved. Stunt coordinator roles rose by 12 percent, composers by two percent, and visual effects supervisors by three percent. These mixed results suggest that gender balance is not improving evenly across the production ecosystem. Some departments are clearly benefiting from more inclusive hiring practices, while others are being left behind.

One of the report’s most consistent findings remains the importance of the showrunner role. ReFrame has reported before that having a woman showrunner is highly predictive of having a gender-balanced series. That pattern held again this year. Among the series that earned the ReFrame Stamp this season, 87 percent had a woman showrunner. In the previous season, that figure was nearly 93 percent. The slight decline is another sign that even the most powerful lever for gender balance is not as strong as it was, but the overall correlation remains clear. When the person running a show is a woman, the ripple effects are felt across writing, directing and casting decisions. When that leadership is absent, more traditional hiring patterns tend to reassert themselves.

The showrunner number is especially important because it helps explain the broader dip in the stamp rate. With only 31 women, nonbinary people and trans people serving as showrunners on top series, the pipeline of gender-balanced shows is limited from the start. ReFrame’s data suggests that if the industry wants to improve its overall numbers, the most effective single step would be to put more women in charge of shows in the first place.

There is some good news for advocates of inclusive hiring in the report’s renewal data. ReFrame found that gender-balanced series were slightly more likely to be renewed and slightly less likely to be cancelled. Of the 27 first-season series that received the stamp, 24 were renewed, an 89 percent renewal rate. By comparison, 38 of the 45 first-season series that did not receive the stamp were renewed, an 84 percent renewal rate. During the 2024-2025 television season, 11 shows in the top 100 were cancelled. Four of those had received the stamp, while seven had not.

The gap is not massive, but it runs against the argument that inclusive hiring is somehow a commercial disadvantage. At a moment when networks and streaming platforms are making aggressive decisions about which shows to renew, cut or cancel, the data suggest that gender-balanced productions are holding their own. Whether that is because these shows benefit from a wider range of creative voices or because the same values that lead to balanced hiring also lead to better storytelling is difficult to measure. But the connection is consistent enough that ReFrame chose to highlight it in this year’s report.

The full list of recipients for the ReFrame Stamp during the 2025-2026 television season includes 42 series from a wide range of platforms, genres and seasons. Returning hits such as Bridgerton, The Bear, Euphoria, Industry, Wednesday, Fallout and Only Murders in the Building appear alongside new series including Ironheart, Wonder Man, The Testaments, IT: Welcome to Derry and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. The recipients span Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO, HBO Max, Hulu, Disney+, Peacock, Paramount+, ABC and Apple TV.

The presence of so many high-profile shows on the list is proof that gender-balanced hiring is possible at scale. The departure of other shows from the list, and the overall decline in the stamp rate, is proof that those gains are not permanent. ReFrame’s report is designed to track whether the television industry is moving toward a more equitable future or drifting away from one. This year’s answer, according to the organization’s leadership, is that the industry is still moving backward.

The full list of ReFrame Stamp recipients for the 2025-2026 television season is below.