Women Don’t Watch One Of The Biggest Streaming Services

Data shows that women tend to avoid Disney's streaming content, as the demographic breakup drastically skews towards males.

By Matthew Creith | Published

In the all encompassing streaming wars that consumers find themselves embroiled in these days, Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, and others have attempted to launch worthwhile content for a variety of viewers and their individualistic interests. However, many women don’t seem to be taking to Disney+ in terms of their streaming needs, as much of the content on the subscription streaming service platform contains too much Star Wars and Marvel Cinematic Universe fare that seem to appeal more to male viewers than female. While this is not the case for all women of course, it seems to be a trend in a general sense for Disney+, according to Cosmic Book News and data revealed by Parrot Analytics.

The news that women aren’t necessarily watching a lot of the available streaming content on Disney+ is the result of research performed as to why many of Marvel Studios and Star Wars television shows aren’t doing very well across the board. Cosmic Book News goes on to report that according to Parrott Analytics, Disney+ tends to skew heavily in the male direction in terms of its viewership, and recent additions to Marvel’s cannon like She Hulk: Attorney at Law and Ms. Marvel don’t tend to pull in male viewers like other series such as Loki or Moon Knight. It is a consistent effort on the part of Disney to center their stories, characters, and plot lines around strong female characters in recent years, and men just aren’t showing up to watch these types of programs, but women don’t seem to be either.

Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian is a good case study of sorts for those experts that believe it shouldn’t matter what the viewership is as long as there are strong male and female characters featured in lead roles within the show. As part of the Star Wars franchise, the Pedro Pascal-led series has become a staple television show for Disney+, acclaimed with critics, and beloved by a fanbase interested in stories from a galaxy far, far away. However, it appears that Disney might end up losing some of its core audience very soon since it recently fired one of the controversial female actors on the show, Gina Carano, leading to uncertain waters with some women as the streaming series enters its third season next year.

Disney+ hit a home run with the first season of The Mandalorian, and created an unbelievably loyal fanbase with its first Marvel television production, WandaVision starring Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, and Kathryn Hahn. Because women generally enjoyed many of these shows right out of the gate, it should be noted that Disney has attempted to capture that magic by streaming a lot of television content that could appeal to that part of their viewership. It seems that they may need to reevaluate their content a bit when it comes to television shows, because Hocus Pocus 2 has been breaking streaming records for Disney+ on the film side, so there might be some lessons learned there about how to appeal to a broad range of their core audience members.