Evan Matsuda
Pronouns: He/Him
Research Mentor(s): Jusang Lee
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Strategy / Business
Program: UROPF
Session: Session 3 (11:00am – 11:50am)
Authors: Evan Matsuda
Abstract
Despite the increase of women in the workforce, the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions is still a significant problem in today’s society. The underrepresentation of female leaders continues to occur in various areas such as in the business world and STEM fields. Using the Hollywood film industry as an example, this study aims to find a concrete answer for the phenomenon of the lack of female leadership representation through coding the gender information of directors/actors of the top-200 grossing movies and examining the constraints of females for movie genres and whether or not females are punished more severely compared to males for straying away from genre conventions of movies. If we find through our analysis that females are constrained in the usage of their film genres and the severity of the penalties that they can face for directing unconventional genres then we would find evidence that underrepresentation of female leaders comes from the harsh discrimination that they face when they become a leader. If we have sufficient evidence to prove that underrepresentation of female leaders stems from the discrimination that is given when becoming a leader then this project is able to open up other paths of research such as finding out why female leaders are discriminated against once they become a leader. Further research enables society to be able to create solutions against the lack of female leadership and can be applied to not just females but possibly other marginalized groups of people.
