By Dave DeFusco

When most people think about movie directors, they imagine creative leaders standing behind a camera, calling the shots on a film set. But to researchers, directors are also managers responsible for overseeing large, complex projects that can cost tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.

That perspective led two faculty members from Yeshiva University’s Sy Syms School of Business—Dr. S. Abraham Ravid, Sy Syms Professor of Finance, and Dr. Shu Han, associate professor of management information systems—to investigate an important workplace question: Do age and gender affect who gets hired to lead major projects?

Their findings, “Do Age and Gender Affect Managers’ Careers? Evidence from the Career Paths of Movie Directors,” published in SSRN, suggest that age may play a larger role than many people realize, even in a highly visible industry where performance records are publicly available.

“We wanted to examine whether characteristics such as age and gender influence hiring decisions after accounting for a person’s track record,” said Ravid. “The movie industry provides a rare opportunity to study this because directors are hired project by project and their performance is relatively easy to measure.”

The researchers analyzed the careers of hundreds of film directors, collecting information about their backgrounds, ages, genders, previous jobs in the entertainment industry and the performance of the films they directed. They also examined factors such as box office returns, critics’ reviews and audience ratings.

Because directors are hired one film at a time, the industry offers a useful real-world laboratory for studying hiring decisions. Unlike many corporate settings, where promotion decisions may be difficult to track, each new movie represents a clear hiring event. The researchers first confirmed something that Hollywood insiders have long believed: success matters.

“The strongest predictor of getting another directing job is the success of previous projects,” Han said. “Directors who had stronger financial returns, better reviews and more experience were generally more likely to be hired again.”

In an earlier 2017 study with New York University professor Kose John, Ravid examined the factors that help directors secure future projects, finding that previous success plays a major role in continued employment. More recently, he co-authored the paper “Technology Adoption and Career Concerns: Evidence from the Adoption of Digital Technology in Motion Pictures,” accepted for publication in the Review of Corporate Financial Studies. That research explored a different but equally important question: who is most willing to embrace risky new technologies in the workplace. 

Performance, however, was not the entire story. After accounting for a director’s previous success, the researchers found that age remained a significant factor. As directors grew older, their chances of landing another project declined.

“One of the most surprising findings was that age mattered even though almost all of the directors in our sample were younger than 61,” said Han. “In fact, we found evidence of age effects even among directors younger than 50.”

The researchers found that hiring prospects tended to peak when directors were in their late 30s or early 40s. After that, the likelihood of being hired for another film gradually declined, even when directors had records comparable to those of younger colleagues.

To make sure the results were not simply caused by older directors choosing to retire, the team conducted several additional tests. They examined economic downturns, analyzed younger groups of directors separately and manually investigated directors who left the sample.

“We found that the vast majority of directors who stopped directing had not retired,” said Ravid. “Many returned to other entertainment-related jobs. That strengthened our confidence that what we were observing was not simply people deciding to leave the profession.”

The study also explored the role of gender. Women accounted for only about 12% of new directors entering the profession, highlighting a longstanding imbalance in the industry. Once women became directors, however, the researchers found relatively little evidence of direct gender discrimination in hiring decisions.

“Women clearly follow a different path into directing than men,” said Han. “But among those who become directors, we did not find strong evidence that simply being female reduced the likelihood of getting another directing job.”

The picture became more complicated when the researchers scrutinized performance measures. For male directors, strong audience ratings significantly increased the chances of being hired again. For female directors, positive audience ratings appeared to have a weaker impact on future hiring decisions. The researchers also found that women tended to direct films with lower budgets, even after accounting for other factors.

“These findings suggest that the biggest question may not be why women directors are hired differently once they enter the profession,” said Han. “The larger question may be why so few women enter the profession in the first place.”

For Ravid, the study’s significance extends far beyond Hollywood. He said movie directors manage large, high-profile projects, and there is extensive public information about their careers. 

“If we find evidence that age matters in such a visible environment,” said Ravid, “then it is reasonable to wonder whether age matters even more in industries where hiring decisions are less transparent.”

The researchers believe their work contributes to broader conversations about fairness in the workplace. While the movie industry is unique, directors share many characteristics with managers in other fields: they oversee teams, control budgets and are judged by the results they produce.

“Our findings suggest that age can become a disadvantage surprisingly early in a career,” said Ravid. “Understanding that possibility is important if organizations want to ensure that hiring decisions are based on performance and ability rather than assumptions about age.”