By Therese Hartwell, FAUSA
It’s that time of year again—movie awards season—and 2021 has brought historic achievements for women.
Females dominated the Golden Globe Best Director category for the first time with three female nominees. One Night in Miami director Regina King became only the second African-American female and Nomadland director Chloe Zhao the first Asian American woman to receive the nomination, with Emerald Fennell – for “Promising Young Woman” – the other female director nominee. Zhao and Fennell were also nominated for Best Screenplay for a Motion Picture. In winning the director award, Zhao became only the second female director to do so, with her film being the first film directed by a woman to win the Golden Globe for Best Drama.
Both the Directors Guild of America and the Academy Awards also nominated two women directors (Zhao and Fennell) for the first time. Yet, inexplicably, neither recognized Regina King for her stellar work. Currently, Kathryn Bigelow is the only woman to have won an Academy Award for Directing, for The Hurt Locker in 2010, but Zhao and her film appear to be frontrunners for Oscars.
While awards are only a miniscule aspect of the film industry, they can dramatically impact the success of a film and how widely it is seen. Nominations also reflect both the awarding body’s attitude toward films made by women and the extent to which studios hire women to direct major, potentially award-winning films.
According to a recent study by the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film at San Diego State University, female directors have also made progress beyond the awards scene. The study shows that women made up a record-breaking percentage of film directors in 2020: 16% for the 100 top-grossing films, up from 12% in 2019 and 4% in 2018 and 18% for the top 250 films, up from 13% in 2019 and 8% in 2018.
Despite these advances, numbers remain appallingly low. In addition, the San Diego State study found that in 2020, the percentages of women working behind the scenes collectively as directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors and cinematographers on the 100 top-grossing films barely moved, from 20% to 21%. The study found that in the same year, 67% of films employed only 0 to 4 women in these roles.
Not only do these statistics speak to the challenges that women face in the motion picture industry, they also impact the presence of women working on films in other roles. A study by Dr. Martha M. Lauzen found that “films with at least one woman director had substantially higher percentages of women working as writers, editors, and cinematographers than films with exclusively male directors.”
In front of the camera, women are also taking on more significant roles. Another study by Dr. Lauzen looking at over 1000 characters in the top grossing films of 2019 revealed the positive news that the percentage of female protagonists (characters from whose perspective the story is told) rose from 31% in 2018 to 40% in 2019, nearing a historic parity with male protagonists at 43%. Encouragingly, in 2019, studio features were almost as likely to have female protagonists as were independent features, a dramatic change from 2018.
However, the percentage of females constituting major characters (those who appear in more than one scene and are instrumental to the action of the story) and all characters with speaking parts remained relatively stable in 2019 at only 37% and 34% respectively. The importance of females in key roles is further reflected in Dr. Lauzen’s finding that “films with at least one woman director and/or writer were more likely than films with no women in these roles to feature higher percentages of females as protagonists, in major roles, and as speaking characters.”
Dr. Lauzen’s work has also found a dramatic difference in the way males and females are represented in film. For instance, 70% of female characters in the study were under 40 and only 30% over 40, whereas 53% of men were under 40 and 47% over 40, with similar findings for major and speaking characters. According to the study, significantly more female characters had a known marital status, while significantly more male characters were given an identifiable occupation, seen in their work setting and seen in primarily work roles as opposed to personal life-related roles. Alarmingly, of those characters shown in leadership roles, only 26% of them were female versus 74% male.
Particularly concerning is the study’s findings that 68% of all female characters in 2019 were white – up 3 percentage points from 2018 – with 20% black, 5% Latina, and 7% Asian. Major female characters were 70% white, 18% black, 6% Latina and 5% Asian.
What can you do?
- Watch movies with a critical eye not only to the presence or absence of major female characters but also to the way those characters are portrayed.
- Support women filmmakers by paying to see their films at theaters when that becomes safe or through streaming.
- Watch films directed by black women that have dramatically impacted the film industry.
- Consider donating to and/or following organizations such as Women in Film and The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.
- Join FAUSA’s Fundraiser for the FAWCO Target Project, and support both female filmmakers and the Target Project. FAUSA’s LUNAFEST® film festival fundraiser will feature seven short films made by and about women. It takes place the weekend of April 16 with Zoom calls on April 18 for a film discussion/pre-Oscar party with a wine tasting pairing wines with movie snack food.