Gender bias in copyrights can and will improve, trends prove

OVERVIEW This research explores the participation of women in the copyright system by providing key metrics on women authors in copyright registrations, and evaluating registration rates in the broader context of women in copyright related occupations. A combination of copyright registration records and publically available records was analyzed to explore these relationships.

KEY FINDINGS

The share of copyright registrations overall accounted for by women has risen over time, and women make up over 38.5 percent of authors of works registered in 2020. • In 1978, the effective year of the current Copyright Act, women represented only 27.9 percent of authors in registered works. By 2012, this number rose to about 36 percent, and as of 2020, women represent 38.5 percent of sole authors in copyright registrations. Women’s proportional share of registrations differs across copyright categories but has risen over time in almost all categories and in some categories achieved gender parity. • Women authors are present in roughly 50 percent of copyright registrations for nondramatic literary works. The proportional share of women authors for motion pictures has more than doubled since 1978, and in that same time, the proportional share of machine-readable works or computer programs by women authors has nearly tripled. • Women’s proportional share of authorship in performing arts-related registration categories demonstrates moderate but sustained growth, with women authors present in 20 to 30 percent of registered works. • Registrations of artworks reached near gender parity in the mid-1990s, but the share of copyright registrations of artworks by women authors dropped to the low 40 percent range in the early 2000s and has remained relatively consistent. Occupations with higher shares of women participants have higher shares of copyright registration by women authors. • There is a strong concordance between women’s participation rates in copyright-related occupations and their proportional share of copyright registrations in related categories. This indicates that copyright registration data is likely a good proportional measure of women’s involvement in creative activity.