ReFrame Report Reveals Decline in Gender-Balanced Hiring Across Top Television Series for 2025-2026 Season
Gender-balanced hiring on television’s most popular series has declined during the 2025-2026 season, according to the latest annual report from ReFrame, the industry watchdog organization founded by the Sundance Institute and Women in Film (WIF). The report, released in collaboration with WIF, found that just 42 of the season’s top 100 series earned the organization’s ReFrame Stamp, a designation awarded to productions that meet specific benchmarks for gender-balanced hiring. That marks a three percent drop from the previous year and signals what several industry leaders describe as an unsettling reversal in the push for greater representation both in front of and behind the camera.
“It confirms what I think a lot of people are witnessing, experiencing, which is that we are backsliding on gender balance,” said WIF CEO Kirsten Schaffer in an interview accompanying the report’s release. Schaffer’s comments underscore a growing concern among advocates that the entertainment industry is losing momentum on diversity commitments that had been steadily improving over the past several years.
ReFrame, established in 2017 by the Sundance Institute and WIF, created the ReFrame Stamp as a way to publicly recognize television series and films that demonstrate meaningful gender equity in hiring. The stamp is awarded to productions that employ sufficient numbers of women or nonbinary or trans people in key roles such as showrunner, lead actor, co-lead actor, director, and various heads of department. The organization uses a detailed point system to determine whether a production qualifies, evaluating both the quantity and the significance of the roles held by underrepresented gender groups.
Schaffer emphasized that the benchmark was designed to be attainable, making the decline all the 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,” she said. “We’re looking for forward progress.” She also pushed back against the idea that industry-wide contraction could explain the drop, noting that the stamp is based on percentages, not raw numbers. “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,” she added.
This year’s report highlights several concerning trends, particularly in the realm of lead roles. Only 39 women or nonbinary or trans people played lead roles across the season’s most popular series, marking the lowest figure in seven years. That represents a significant decline from the previous television season, when 44 series featured women or nonbinary or trans people in lead roles. The drop is especially notable given the sustained attention the industry has paid to on-screen representation since the #MeToo movement and the various inclusion initiatives adopted by studios and streaming platforms.
The report also found a decrease in the representation of women of color and nonbinary or trans people of color in co-lead roles. During the 2024-2025 television season, 55 percent of the most popular series featured at least one woman of color, nonbinary person of color, or trans person of color in a crucial supporting role. In the current 2025-2026 season, that figure fell to 47 percent. The decline suggests that not only are overall opportunities shrinking for underrepresented gender groups, but the erosion is hitting marginalized communities within those groups even harder.
Behind the camera, the findings were more mixed. The percentage of showrunners from underrepresented gender groups ticked up slightly, but the overall numbers remain stark. This season, 31 showrunners on top series were women or nonbinary or trans people, compared with 29 in the previous season. While any increase is welcome, the figure still points to a substantial gap in one of the most influential roles in television production.
Writing rooms showed modest improvement, with the number of series that had at least half of their episodes written by women or nonbinary people rising from 49 in the previous season to 51 in the latest season. However, the report found a decline in directing. The number of series with at least half of their episodes directed by women or nonbinary people dropped from 38 in the 2024-2025 season to just 32 in the 2025-2026 season. That represents a notable reversal in an area where progress had been made in recent years.
The report also examined hiring across various crew departments, where the results were uneven. Representation dipped for first assistant directors by seven percent, production designers by four percent, and directors of photography by three percent. At the same time, there were gains in other departments, with representation rising by 12 percent for stunt coordinators, two percent for composers, and three percent for visual effects supervisors. These mixed results suggest that while some corners of the industry are making strides, others continue to struggle with integrating women, nonbinary, and trans people into key technical and leadership roles.
One of the most significant findings in this year’s report is the continued correlation between women showrunners and overall gender-balanced productions. Having a woman in the showrunner position remains a highly reliable predictor of whether a series will achieve the ReFrame Stamp. In the 2025-2026 season, 87 percent of the series that received the stamp had a woman showrunner. That is down slightly from the previous season, when nearly 93 percent of stamped series had a woman showrunner, but the connection remains strong.
The report also found that gender-balanced series tended to fare better in terms of renewal and survival. Among the 27 first-season series that received the ReFrame Stamp, 24 were renewed, accounting for 89 percent. By contrast, 38 of the 45 first-season series that did not receive the stamp were renewed, or about 84 percent. Additionally, eleven shows were cancelled during the 2024-2025 television season. Of those, four had received the ReFrame Stamp, while seven had not. While the difference is not enormous, it suggests that gender-balanced hiring is not a sacrifice for commercial success and may even be associated with greater stability in a volatile television marketplace.
ReFrame’s methodology and findings have become an important benchmark for studios, streamers, and production companies seeking to measure their inclusivity efforts. The stamp is often used in industry conversations as a marker of commitment to equitable hiring, and its absence can be a point of criticism for major networks and streaming platforms. By publicly recognizing productions that meet its standards, ReFrame hopes to incentivize better hiring practices across the industry.
The full list of recipients of the ReFrame Stamp for the 2025-2026 television season includes a wide range of series across broadcast, cable, and streaming platforms. Among the recognized shows are:
- 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 reflects a mix of returning favorites and new series, spanning genres from drama and comedy to science fiction and mystery. Several major streaming platforms are represented, as are traditional broadcast networks and premium cable outlets. The presence of so many high-profile series on the list demonstrates that gender-balanced hiring is possible even within the industry’s biggest productions.
Still, ReFrame and WIF leaders worry that the overall trend is moving in the wrong direction. The decline in lead roles, the reduction in co-lead opportunities for women of color and nonbinary or trans people of color, and the dip in directing assignments all point to a broader slowdown in the push for gender equity. While certain metrics improved, the report paints a picture of an industry that is struggling to maintain, let alone accelerate, the progress it had achieved in previous years.
For Schaffer and others at WIF, the hope is that the report will serve as a wake-up call. She noted that the entertainment industry has the tools and the awareness to do better, but commitment must be renewed and sustained. The report is not merely a scorecard, she said, but a guide for what needs to change. As television continues to evolve, with tighter budgets and shifting audience demands, the question remains whether gender balance will remain a priority or become yet another casualty of contraction. For now, the data shows that the industry is edging backward, and the stakes for creators, audiences, and the culture itself are high.
