Besides the top award, winners will be selected by the judges in categories like Narrative, Documentary and Animation, as well less traditional categories like Experimental and Remix.
Looking at films shown at the Sundance Film Festival over the past decade - and accounting for 820 narrative and documentary films - researchers found women represented 29.8% of some 11, 000 filmmakers.
There are more women working in documentary films than narrative films, but study director Stacy Smith said her research found that "as commerce moves in, females move out".