Gender-Balanced Hiring on Top TV Series Slips, ReFrame Report Finds
Gender-balanced hiring on television’s most popular series dipped during the 2025-2026 season, according to ReFrame’s latest annual report, produced in collaboration with Women in Film (WIF). The organization awarded its ReFrame Stamp to 42 of the season’s top 100 series, a decline of three percent from the previous cycle and a sign that the industry is losing ground on a goal that had been moving slowly but steadily forward.
WIF CEO Kirsten Schaffer said the findings should worry anyone who cares about representation. “It confirms what I think a lot of people are witnessing, experiencing, which is that we are backsliding on gender balance,” she said in an interview. Schaffer added that ReFrame designed its criteria to be attainable, which makes the retreat even more troubling. “We think we’ve made it relatively easy to get and so the fact that the numbers are moving backward rather than forwards is really an issue. We’re looking for forward progress.”
ReFrame, founded by the Sundance Institute and WIF in 2017, uses a point system to decide which productions qualify for the Stamp. To earn the designation, a television series must hire enough women, nonbinary or trans people in significant roles, including showrunner, lead actor, co-lead actor, director, and various heads of department. The system is meant to measure whether inclusion is translating into real leadership across a production, not just in one or two high-profile positions.
This year’s report shows that inclusion in those key roles is moving in the wrong direction. Only 39 women or nonbinary or trans people played lead roles in the top series of the 2025-2026 season, the lowest number in seven years. That is a marked drop from the previous television season, when 44 women or nonbinary or trans people held lead roles. The downturn was not limited to lead roles. The report also found a decrease in the representation of women of color and nonbinary and trans people of color in co-lead roles. In the 2024-2025 season, 55 percent of the most popular series had at least one woman of color, nonbinary or trans person of color in a crucial supporting role. This season, that figure fell to 47 percent.
Behind the camera, the findings were mixed. The number of showrunners who identify as women, nonbinary or trans rose slightly, from 29 in the previous season to 31 in the latest season. But that small increase does not alter the broader picture: showrunning remains an overwhelmingly exclusive role. Writers’ rooms showed modest improvement, with 51 series hiring women or nonbinary people for at least half their episodes, up from 49 in the prior cycle. Directing, however, moved in the other direction. The number of series that had at least half their episodes directed by women or nonbinary people fell from 38 in 2024-2025 to 32 in 2025-2026.
The report also tracked below-the-line and crew positions, and there, too, the pattern was uneven. Representation on first assistant directors dipped by seven percent, production designers by four percent, and directors of photography by three percent. On the positive side, stunt coordinators saw a 12 percent increase, composers a two percent increase, and visual effects supervisors a three percent increase. Still, the cumulative picture is one of stagnation and selective progress rather than steady, industry-wide improvement.
One of the report’s most revealing findings is the continued link between a woman showrunner and an overall gender-balanced production. This past season, 87 percent of the series that received the ReFrame Stamp had a woman showrunner. That is lower than the previous season, when nearly 93 percent of stamped shows had a woman showrunner, but the relationship remains strong. Advocates have long pointed to showrunners as the single most important driver of hiring decisions on a series. When a woman or nonbinary person is in charge, the rest of the production is far more likely to reflect a range of genders across writing, directing, and crew roles.
The report also offers evidence that gender balance is not a creative or commercial liability. Among first-season series, 24 of the 27 shows that received the Stamp, or 89 percent, were renewed, compared with 38 of 45 series, or 84 percent, that did not receive the Stamp. During the 2024-2025 television season, 11 shows were canceled, and only four of those cancellations had been awarded the Stamp. The other seven were not stamped. That suggests that shows with balanced hiring practices are at least as likely to survive as their less balanced counterparts, and in some cases are more likely to be renewed.
Schaffer’s comments reflect a growing concern among industry watchdogs that the entertainment business, amid cost-cutting and consolidation, is retreating from the diversity commitments it made during the wave of social justice protests in 2020. The fact that the ReFrame Stamp is based on percentages, rather than raw numbers, makes the decline especially significant. As Schaffer put it, “Even though there are fewer television shows being made right now across the industry, this is based on percentages, so the percentages should still stay there.”
The ReFrame Stamp has become a widely recognized benchmark in Hollywood, and the list of honorees for the 2025-2026 season includes a range of series across streaming, broadcast, and cable. The full list of recipients is as follows:
- 56 Days / Amazon Prime Video: Season 1
- All Her Fault / Peacock: Season 1
- Ballard / Amazon Prime Video: Season 1
- Bridgerton / Netflix: Season 4
- Down Cemetery Road / Apple TV: Season 1
- Euphoria / HBO: Season 3
- Fallout / Amazon Prime Video: Season 2
- Gen V / Amazon Prime Video: Season 2
- Ginny & Georgia / Netflix: Season 3
- High Potential / ABC: Season 2
- His & Hers / Netflix: Season 1
- How to Get to Heaven from Belfast / Netflix: Season 1
- Industry / HBO Max: Season 4
- Ironheart / Disney+: Season 1
- IT: Welcome to Derry / HBO: Season 1
- Leanne / Netflix: Season 1
- Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette / Hulu: Season 1
- Monarch: Legacy of Monsters / Apple TV: Season 2
- Nobody Wants This / Netflix: Season 2
- Only Murders in the Building / Hulu: Season 5
- Ponies / Peacock: Season 1
- Scarpetta / Amazon Prime Video: Season 1
- Something Very Bad is Going to Happen / Netflix: Season 1
- Star Trek: Starfleet Academy / Paramount+: Season 1
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds / Paramount+: Season 3
- Task / HBO: Season 1
- The Bear / Hulu: Season 4
- The Beast in Me / Netflix: Season 1
- The Boys / Amazon Prime Video: Season 5
- The Diplomat / Netflix: Season 3
- The Gilded Age / HBO: Season 3
- The Girlfriend / Amazon Prime Video: Season 1
- The Hunting Wives / Netflix: Season 1
- The Lincoln Lawyer / Netflix: Season 4
- The Madison / Paramount+: Season 1
- The Miniature Wife / Peacock: Season 1
- The Summer I Turned Pretty / Amazon Prime Video: Season 3
- The Testaments / Hulu: Season 1
- Wayward / Netflix: Season 1
- We Were Liars / Amazon Prime Video: Season 1
- Wednesday / Netflix: Season 2
- Wonder Man / Disney+: Season 1
The list demonstrates that gender-balanced productions are possible across genres, budgets, and platforms. But the report’s overall trajectory suggests that such balance remains fragile. Without deliberate effort from studios, networks, and executives, the modest gains made in recent years may continue to erode. For Schaffer, the message is simple: the industry can still reverse course, but only if it treats gender balance as an ongoing commitment rather than a one-time goal.
