The biggest and best source of accurate information regarding women in the film and television workplace is The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film from San Diego State University. For over a decade they have been tracking the jobs women have in the industry. Almost every time you hear about statistics regarding the jobs women get it's usually citing one of their annual reports. In fact, you'll probably read another dozen or so articles using their statistics from us. We think they do fantastic work.As reported by several media outlets including The Wrap (link below) The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film released their annual report titled Independent Women: Behind-the-Scenes Employment on Festival Films in 2013-14. The report looks at the representation of women working in key roles in the top 23 film festivals in the USA.
Things are doing ok over all this year (2013-14) with the percentage of women working behind the scenes remaining at 26%, the same as last year. This number has slowly been rising from the 24% in 2008-09, but let's be honest, hovering around the 1/4 mark isn't exactly stellar to begin with.
Since our focus on this blog is particularly on writers and directors, lets analyze those roles.
The overall number of women directors is down from 29% in 2011-12 to 23% this past year. It's interesting to note that this is a combination of narrative film and documentary film. Women directors have had much more success in documentaries accounting for 39% of docu directors in 2011-12. Shockingly, this year women account for only 28% of docu directors - a major backslide. In narrative film, women directors hold steady at an 18% representation, the same as two years ago. In 2008-09, that figure was 15%. Perhaps this is a slow climb, but it would be nice to see representation of female directors in narrative films push beyond 20%.
As for women writers, this year saw 22% overall, up 3% from 5 years ago but still a small backslide from the 2011-12 figures that showed women writers at 24% overall. Similar to the statistics of women directors, women have typically had better showing in documentaries. Two years ago, women made up 32% of docu writers, this year they only accounted for 23%Again, similar to women directors, the number of women writers in narrative film has been slowly climbing. This year, women writers held steady at 21%, a slight rise from the 15% that was reported in 2008-09.
At the end of the day, perhaps a micro view of the film industry year to year isn't a significant source of information. Nit picking year to year may or may not reveal trends. However, it's important to realize that this is 2014 and these are pathetic numbers. Women have been involved in these very key roles behind the scenes in the film industry since the inception of cinema.This article doesn't examine the top big budget movies, these are the indies. Certainly some of these festivals will host films made and sold to major production companies, but in general, this is where small time movie makers prove their worth. If women aren't picking up jobs here, they aren't going to get them in bigger budget productions down the line. These numbers might be small, but they are huge compared to the number of women doing these jobs for studio productions.
Whatever the barriers are that prevent women from picking up that camera and making their own movies, we need to get past it. If you have a story to tell, tell it. You may never see another women doing the job you do behind the scenes but that's no reason not to do it. Push through and inspire someone else.
The Wrap: Women Directors and Writers Lose Ground in Indie Films as Numbers Decline
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