Hollywood gives men second chances it doesn't give women

Last month, I wrote about the career paths top directors took to direct a major motion picture. One finding was that women were less likely than men to make a second film on the same scale. A few of you got in touch to ask for more details on this, so I went back to the numbers.I studied the career paths of 1,765 directors, all of whom have directed a top-grossing movie since 1980. I looked at the professional work they had done since directing a movie that appeared on the ‘top 100 US-grossing’ chart that year. More detailed information about my methodology is at the end of the article.Among directors who reached the top 100 and had plenty of time to go again, 53% of men directed a second top-grossing film, but only 40% of women did. So I wanted to know why. And the answer turned out to depend almost entirely on one thing: how well the first film did.Does the size of the first film matter?I sorted every director by the size of their first top-grossing film, using its US box office…