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How Many Women Directed These Emmy-Winning Series?

Just an innocent question!

Ariane Lange
by Ariane Lange

BuzzFeed News Reporter

To refresh everyone's memory, half the people in the world are women. But how many episodes of the 2017 Emmys' Outstanding Series nominees were directed by women?

HBO

Rules: For Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Drama Series, and Outstanding Limited Series, I looked at the IMDB credits on seasons with episodes that fell within the 2017 Emmys eligibility period (June 1, 2016 to May 31, 2017). We've known since October of 2015 that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was investigating Hollywood for gender discrimination against female directors, so everyone should have had plenty of time to reflect on their hiring practices.

Veep, Outstanding Comedy Series: 4 episodes of 10 were directed by women

HBO

Nominees:

Atlanta: 1 episode of 10 was directed by a woman

Black-ish: 9 episodes of 24 were directed by women

Master of None: 2 episodes of 10 were directed by a woman

Modern Family: 8 episodes of 22 were directed by women

Silicon Valley: 4 episodes of 10 were directed by a woman

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: 4 episodes of 13 were directed by women

The Handmaid's Tale, Outstanding Drama Series: 8 episodes of 10 were directed by women

Hulu

Better Call Saul: 1 episode of 10 was directed by a woman

The Crown: 0 of its 10 episodes were directed by women

House of Cards: 6 episodes of 13 were directed by women

Stranger Things: 0 of its 8 episodes were directed by women

This Is Us: 4 episodes of 18 were directed by women

Westworld: 1 episode of 10 was directed by a woman

Big Little Lies, Outstanding Limited Series: 0 of its 7 episodes were directed by women (N.B. all episodes were directed by the same man)

HBO

Fargo: 2 episodes of 10 were directed by a woman

Feud: 4 episodes of eight were directed by women

Genius: 2 episodes of 10 were directed by women

The Night Of: 0 of its 8 episodes were directed by women

Out of 221 episodes, 60 were directed by women. That is 27%. Again, women are half of the people in the world.

These 19 shows had 221 episodes between them. There were 19 series nominated and only two — Handmaid's Tale and Feud — hired women to direct 50% or more of their episodes, but they were all white women. Of the individual female directors counted, less than a third were women of color.

Stranger Things, The Crown, and Big Little Lies hired only male directors.

Happy Emmys, everyone!

UPDATE

This post has been updated to reflect the winners.