Alright, this is actually just a paper I wrote last year in college. Lazy blogging, I know. But I thought that some of you movie-fans might be interested in learning a little bit more about what it's like for women in "The Biz." Anyway, here's the paper. Sources linked at the bottom of the post.
Gender Inequity in Film
In 85 years, the Academy has only honored one woman with an Oscar in the ‘Best Director’ category. It has only nominated four. There are many possible reasons for this, cited in the comments sections of articles and “infographics” on employment of women in film daily. Some of these include that movies directed by women do not sell, that women are uninterested in directing, that they are not good at it, and that they don’t work as hard. I’d like to offer and explore some research-backed alternatives to these suggestions.
What Does this Mean for Women in Film?
Women get fewer awards because there are fewer of them in the business; that’s certainly true. Without yet examining why this is the case, let’s look at the numbers.
In 2013 women made up “16% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 (domestic) grossing films of 2013,” according the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film’s newest annual “Celluloid Ceiling” report. Since the first report in 1998 that number has remained within a few percentage points—with this year’s number representing a decrease of one percentage point compared to the results from 1998.
Also in 2013, 36% of those top films employed 0 to 1 woman in the categories considered (directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors) while 1% employed 0 to 1 men in the same positions. Considering the opposite figure in this section of the study, 32% of these films employed 10 to 13 men in these positions while 2% did so with women. Since 2007, the percentage of top grossing feature films directed by women has fluctuated between 5% and 9%, never reaching higher than 9%.
A historical comparison of women’s employment on the top 250 films in 2013 and 1998 reveals that the percentages of women directors, writers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers have declined. The percentage of producers has increased slightly (1%). However, it is actually down from more recent years, coinciding with an increase in prestige associated with producing (Lauzen, 2014).
Job Inequality
The most important possible reason for this massive disparity is the employment disadvantage affecting women in the film industry. According to women working in the field, there is stigma against working with females on-screen or behind the scenes. There is an idea that movies for women, about women, or by women won’t sell, even though there has been research suggesting that the biggest factor in the success of a movie is its production budget, with very little variation caused by female presence on or off-screen (Lauzen, 2008).
Another key bias in the business also has to do with accepted norms. It is extremely rare for a woman to direct a film about a man, because producers think it makes more sense for a man to tell a man’s story; however, the majority of films about women are directed by men with no complaint about how it makes more sense for a woman to tell a woman’s story. Since most writers are men, most stories are about men, meaning that all the female directors are left to fight over the 15% of movies that feature female leads—and still lose out to men (Hamedy, 2014).
So, female directors are having a hard time getting hired. According to Cathy Schulman, Oscar-winning producer and president of Women in Film, “females are signed way less than men, whether they are directors or (in other fields) . . . there’s a belief at the agencies that women have shorter half-lives as clients.” This is referring to the idea that women are less likely than men to get work once they are over 40. Because of this idea, Schuman reports that “a new male director with a film at Sundance is six times more likely to get signed than a female director” (Abrams, 2013).
Another reason is lack of financial support. In one study conducted by Schulman’s organization, it was determined that a “key obstacle for women in film is an inability to get funding from financing networks, which are primarily male controlled.”
Within the Director’s Guild of America, there is more to contend with. The DGA, as it’s called, is the number one organization for supporting directing work in the United States. But it is unclear if it is truly supporting the work of women directors, as its employment of women has remained stagnant for the past 20 years, even while numbers of ethnic minority males have climbed. Women make up only 13.6% of the DGA membership, with minority women included. The number of minority women has decreased between 2012 and 2013 from 4% to 2% (DGA, 2013).
According to DGA member Maria Giese, “ethnic minority males comprise 7% of the director membership, but helm over 14% of TV episodes. Women, on the other hand, comprise nearly 14% of the director membership, but only direct 12% of TV episodes” (Giese, 2014). This may be partially due to the diversity enhancing methods employed by the DGA. Though women are included as a minority, studios can still fulfill diversity requirements without hiring women. There is no legal obligation to support women, only to ‘improve diversity hiring’ which can mean that studios only consider men of diversity to fill their quotas.
Then there is a lack of motivation to continue in the business once you see the obstacles. The gender gap in film is enormous, perhaps elevated because of the massive amounts of money made by those involved. In Forbes’ 2012 lists of highest-paid actors and actresses, the first nine of the top ten males made more money than all ten of the highest-paid females. The tenth male was paid more than all but one of the highest-paid females. The highest-paid male (Robert Downey Jr.) made $75m while the highest-paid female (Angelina Jolie) made $33m, less than half (Pomerantz, 2013).
This trend holds true for female directors. In Forbes’ 2010 list of Hollywood’s highest earning women there were no directors featured, while the corresponding list for men featured three directors. According to the article, “Beyonce, who comes in No. 2, made $87 million, which, as Forbes points out, would have put her No. 9 on the men's list. The remaining top-earning women wouldn't have placed at all on the men's list.” These three male directors earned hundreds of millions of dollars for that year. James Cameron, one of the three, earned $2.8 billion overall for Avatar while his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow, who became the first female to win an Oscar for Best Director, earned only $16.4 million for the film she won for (Powers, 2010). Of the top 100 highest earning directors of all time, the highest-paid female comes in at number 76 (Graham, 2012).
With this knowledge, who would even want to go up against all the discrimination for a meager payoff compared to what others in their field are getting?
Why does it Matter?
The film and television industry is a big part of our lives and shapes the way we see things. When the filmmakers’ perspectives are skewed, our perspectives become skewed. Consider this: in the top 500 films from 2007 to 2012, only 10.7% of films featured a balanced cast (half of the characters are female). But there is a 10.6% increase with a woman director and an 8.7% increase with a female screenwriter (Zurko, 2013). In a 2010 USC Annenberg study, Stacy L. Smith notes that “movies with male directors featured only 29.3 percent female actors, whereas in movies with at least one female director, that number rose to 44.6 percent” (Chouetti, 2013).
Oscar-winner Geena Davis reports, “the basics are that for every one female-speaking character in family-rated films (G, PG and PG-13), there are roughly three male characters; that crowd and group scenes in these films — live-action and animated — contain only 17 percent female characters; and that the ratio of male-female characters has been exactly the same since 1946.”
She then goes on to make this connection: “Couldn't it be that the percentage of women in leadership positions in many areas of society — Congress, law partners, Fortune 500 board members, military officers, tenured professors and many more — stall out at around 17 percent because that's the ratio we've come to see as the norm?” (Davis, 2013).
So, representation can have a big impact on the way we live our lives and the things we pass on to later generations. While there may be many reasons why there are currently fewer women in film than men, there are also many reasons to try to change that. By addressing some of the current inequities in film employment, we may begin to see a change in the number of women both on-screen and behind the scenes.
Works
Cited
Abrams, R., Setoodeh, R. (2013, October 1). Catherine Hardwicke: Despite ‘Twilight’ Success, It Hasn’t Been an Easy Road. Variety, retrieved from http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/catherine-hardwicke-despite-twilight-success-it-hasnt-been-an-easy-road-1200683518/
Choueiti, M., Pieper, K., Scofield, E., & Smith, S. L. (2013). Gender inequality in 500 popular films: examining on-screen portrayals and behind-the-scenes employment patterns in motion pictures released between 2007-2012. Retrieved from http://annenberg.usc.edu/Faculty/Communication and Journalism/~/media/5DB47326757B416FBE2CB5E6F1B5CBE4.ashx
Davis, G. (2013, December 11). Geena Favis' two easy steps to make Hollywood less sexist. The Hollywood Reporter, Retrieved from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/geena-davis-two-easy-steps-664573?mobile_redirect=false
DGA (2013, October 2). DGA Report Finds Director Diversity in Episodic Television Remains Static. DGA, retrieved from http://www.dga.org/News/PressReleases/2013/100213-DGA-Report-Finds-Director-Diversity-in-Episodic-Television-Remains-Static.aspx
Giese, M. (2014, May 6). A Surprisingly Simple Solution for Women Directors. Retrieved from http://www.womendirectorsinhollywood.com/
Graham, R. (2012, July 31). ‘Matrix’ Director’s Gender Transition Makes Her The Highest-Grossing Female Director Of All Time. The Grindstone, retrieved from http://www.thegrindstone.com/2012/07/31/career-management/lana-wachowski-cloud-atlas-sex-change-highest-grossing-female-director-of-all-time-219/
Hamedy, S. (2014, March 11). Report: Just 15% of lead characters in major movies are female. Los Angeles Times, retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/11/entertainment/la-et-mn-women-film-report-20140311
Lauzen, M. (2014). The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women on the Top 250 Films of 2013. Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, San Diego State University, retrieved from http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/files/2013_Celluloid_Ceiling_Report.pdf
Lauzen, M. (2008). Women @ the Box Office: A Study of the Top 100 Worldwide Grossing Films. Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, San Diego State University, retrieved from http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/files/Women%20@%20Box%20Office.pdf
Murty, G. (2013, February 21). How Female Directors Could, at Last, Infiltrate Hollywood: Go Indie First. Atlantic, retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/02/how-female-directors-could-at-last-infiltrate-hollywood-go-indie-first/273309/
Pomerantz, D. (2013, July 29). Angelina Jolie tops our list of Hollywood's highest-paid actresses. Forbes, Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/dorothypomerantz/2013/07/29/angelina-jolie-tops-our-list-of-hollywoods-highest-paid-actresses/
Powers, L. (2010, November 12). Why Are No Female Directors on Hollywood's 10 Highest-Earning Women List? Hollywood Reporter, retrieved from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/no-female-directors-hollywoods-10-44736
Zurko, N. (2013, November 25). Gender Inequality in Film. NYFA, retrieved from http://www.nyfa.edu/film-school-blog/gender-inequality-in-film/
No comments:
Post a Comment