Last year, the three most popular films in the US had female leads, with Star Wars: The Last Jedi at No 1, followed by Beauty and the Beast and Wonder Woman in third place. And there’s plenty more where they came from. Hollywood is still waking up to its masculinity problem, but 2018 looks as if it could be the year powerful women roar on screen in female-driven sci-fi, action blockbusters and super-sleuth thrillers.

“Hollywood’s ‘female director problem’ has been the source of much dialogue over the past several years,” Dr. Stacy L. Smith, the report’s lead author, said in a press release. “The evidence reveals that despite the increased attention, there has been no change for women behind the camera. Mere conversation is not the answer to these problems — and the time for conversation is up. Until major media companies take concrete steps to address the biases that impede hiring, nothing will change.”

Overall, however, my verdict is that both awards shows fall woefully short when it comes to gender representation. Hollywood is currently facing a reckoning when it comes to sexual harassment and assault in the industry. But at the root of that problem is a pervasive power imbalance, and until women are represented equally in positions with real decision-making power, nothing will change.

The three most popular movies at theaters in the United States and Canada in 2017 — “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Wonder Woman” — were each driven by female characters, something that has not happened in at least 37 years, as far back as full box office data is available.

Called Time’s Up, the movement was announced on Monday with an impassioned pledge of support to working-class women in an open letter signed by hundreds of women in show business, many of them A-listers. The letter also ran as a full-page ad in The New York Times, and in La Opinion, a Spanish-language newspaper. “The struggle for women to break in, to rise up the ranks and to simply be heard and acknowledged in male-dominated workplaces must end; time’s up on this impenetrable monopoly,” the letter says.

“Because everyone keeps asking me… YES, the men WILL be standing in solidarity with women on this wearing-all-black movement to protest against gender inequality at this year’s Golden Globes,” Urbinanti wrote in a post to Instagram. “At least ALL MY GUYS will be. Safe to say this may not be the right time to choose to be the odd man out here… just sayin…”

“As a writer I was very hungry to create female characters who felt real, and I was interested in telling stories from an outsider’s perspective,” Ms. Hart said, recalling Hollywood in the early 2000s. “There wasn’t a lot of receptivity to the things I really wanted to write about at the time. I think there is increasing openness to those things now, which makes me really hopeful.”

These images are not usually rendered by women, and they’re not usually rendered by women of color. There is no black woman director who’s done a sci-fi fantasy epic, where people are hopping planets, flying on things, and a black girl saves the universe. It’s not been done. So I can’t say with total confidence, 'Oh, that’ll work.' I have to step into the fear of it and say, 'You know what? It’s worth a try. And I’m worthy to be the one in charge of it.'

For equality to happen, we have to rebalance the scales, which means more women calling the shots—telling their own stories, controlling the narrative, joining and, yes, even dominating the conversation. After all, the problem isn’t that we don’t know women exist. The problem is that women’s lives and worth are still controlled and defined by men. It’s men who decide which issues matter, who counts as a “great artist,” whose story is worth listening to.

What stands out about 2017's crop of women-led films are the ways in which they amplify voices and portray journeys we've rarely heard or seen at the multiplex. Less and less are women on screen just manic pixie dream girls, damsels in distress or psycho ex-girlfriends. Less and less are they simply there to advance the plot for their male counterparts. Thanks to the visions and efforts of female writers and directors — with stellar acting by incredible women, to boot — the future of cinema is looking increasingly, refreshingly female.

The commission’s mission, according to a news release, is to “tackle the broad culture of abuse and power disparity. The commission will lead the entertainment industry toward alignment in achieving safer, fairer, more equitable and accountable workplaces —particularly for women and marginalized people,” according to a statement released Friday evening.

Sources say that at the Golden Globes on Jan. 7, actresses, including nominees and presenters, are planning to wear black to protest gender inequality and to acknowledge the flood of sexual abuse allegations that have rocked Hollywood beginning with Harvey Weinstein. This follows on the heels of the announcement Wednesday that all the presenters at the Jan. 21 Screen Actors Guild Awards will be female.