As per a 20-year study conducted by San Diego State University, coming from its Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, the year 2020 had a record-setting number of female movie directors compared to any other year.

The study shows that the number has been growing over the past years, from 8 percent in 2018, 12 percent in 2019, to a record-setting 18 percent of female directors working on the top 100 highest-grossing films.

Dr. Martha Lauzen, director of the university’s center emphasized that the record “breaks a recent historical pattern in which the numbers trend up one year and down the next.” This representation is significant especially since the film industry suffered greatly from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the data doesn’t account for big titles like Black Widow or Wonder Woman 1984 that were postponed to 2021. “Fully 80 percent of top films still do not have a woman at the helm,” Lauzen remarked.