O Womaniya! 2025 Report: Mapping Gender & Power In Indian Entertainment

International Women’s Day is around the corner, and the customary ‘5 Best Women-Led Films' posts on social media are already lining up. We’ll see the same recycled characters - from the tough cops addressed as ‘madam sir’ to the virtuous homemakers who just exist to endure and forgive. And when the pink confetti settles, we will go back to the same old male-centric narratives. This is why the O Womaniya! 2025 report, researched and curated by Ormax Media, produced by Film Companion Studios, and championed by Prime Video feels so urgent.

Beyond a mere compilation of data, the O Womaniya! report is India’s most definitive analysis of female representation in the entertainment industry - both on screen and off - including corporate talent. It identifies the gaps, challenges, and opportunities for creating a more gender-balanced and inclusive industry. 

This year, the report scrutinises 122 films and series from 2024 across nine Indian languages (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, and Gujarati). It takes a macro look at data from the last four years, analysing the industry-wide trend in the representation of women in entertainment. 

By aggregating data on creative talent, marketing practices, and corporate structures, the report seeks to help industry stakeholders identify where gender imbalances persist and where meaningful progress is being made.

Are Women In Charge?

O Womaniya! 2025 assessed female representation in key Head of Department roles—Direction, Cinematography, Editing, Writing, and Production Design—across the 122 projects. In 2024, only 13% of the HOD positions analysed across key departments of direction, cinematography, editing, writing, and production design were held by women as compared to 15% in 2023, 12% in 2022 and a mere 10% in 2021. 

The unevenness becomes sharper when broken down by department. 23% of titles analysed had Production Design HODs, while 17% had female Writing HODs. However, in technical roles like Editing, Direction, or Cinematography, the percentage does not even go beyond 10%.

How This Impacts Storytelling

When women are missing from decision-making and technical roles, the range of female experiences portrayed on screen narrows. Actor Bhumi Pednekkar, on the O Womaniya! 2025 roundtable, reflected on how these numbers mirror the shrinking space for female-centred stories.

"Over the years, the scripts that I read, in which a female character has a dignified amount of work, have drastically reduced. So has the role of women in technical roles," Bhumi expressed. "Last year, I worked on a project where the workforce was primarily women—the DOP, producers, costume, editor—everybody. But in my decade-long career, that has been only once. Why is that?"

Filmmaker Suresh Triveni, who has directed numerous women-led films like Tumhari Sulu and Jalsa, agrees. "Making a female-led film in mainstream theatrical cinema today feels almost impossible, and a film like Tumhari Sulu would be very difficult to mount now," he shared.

Suresh added, "My stories are inspired by the women around me, and they feel fresh because we’ve told so many stories about men. Unfortunately, a film with a female protagonist is still considered ‘new’, but that freshness and the hunger and energy I see in women actors continues to inspire me as a filmmaker."

Women Hire Women

Female leadership is not about token representation. It signals a shift for the broader women's participation in the workforce. The O Womaniya! 2025 report shows that women are significantly more likely to hire other women when they are in positions of authority.

In 2024, 27% of projects commissioned by a woman had female HODs, but only 6% of the projects commissioned by men had women leading departments. While it is encouraging to see that women in charge are expanding opportunities for other women, the disparity also underscores the need for stronger allyship from men. 

Stuti Ramachandra, Director & Head of Production and Post, International Originals at Prime Video India, puts it in her Foreword, "Real change requires collective and sustained effort. We must ensure that more women have a seat at the table, and that doors remain open for both emerging and established talent."

She adds, "Scroll through these pages, and you’ll find data, yes – but also momentum. You’ll see where women are gaining ground, and where we still have to punch through. My ask is simple: read it, question it, share it – and then let’s do the hard work together."

O Womaniya! Toolkit

In 2024, O Womaniya! introduced a Toolkit that offers a more nuanced and practical framework for assessing female representation in content. The toolkit measures content against four core criteria:

1. Is there at least one named female character with at least one line of dialogue, who plays a role that’s not romantically or familially connected to the male protagonist?
2. Does at least one female character play an active role in taking economic, domestic and/or community decisions?
3. Is there any point in the story where a female protagonist expresses a viewpoint central to the plot that conflicts a male's perspective?
4. Does the show/film keep away from sexualisation of women, and/or violence against women?

This year 32% of the titles analyzed passed the test. 

Once again, the data points back to who holds power behind the scenes. 47% of shows/films with a female commissioning-in-charge passed the Toolkit, compared to 23% of projects overseen by male counterparts. In other words, when women are greenlighting content, the likelihood of it meeting basic standards of equitable representation rises dramatically.

Behind the Scenes Representation

The report also assessed female representation in senior management across 25 top media and entertainment companies, evaluating 110 Director and CXO positions. The findings reveal that women remain significantly underrepresented at the top. In 2024, women occupied 18% of senior management roles, going up 6 percentage points from the previous year.

The numbers in the O Womaniya! 2025 report do not suggest a lack of talent. They reveal a crisis of access. Across creative departments, commissioning roles, and corporate boardrooms, the pattern is consistent: when women hold power, representation improves.

Representation decides who gets funded, who gets hired, who gets to decide what stories are worth telling, and who is allowed to tell them. If the industry treats this report not as an annual audit but as a blueprint, the pink confetti might eventually settle on something more permanent: structural change.

Read the complete report here: www.owomaniya.org