Women in film

Kathryn Bigelow (born 1951) is an American director, producer and writer. With The Hurt Locker (2009), Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director.

Women in film describes the role of women as film directors, actresses, cinematographers, film producers, film critics, and other film industry professions. The work of women film scholars, including feminist film theorists is also described. Women are statistically underrepresented in creative positions in the center of the US film industry, Hollywood. This underrepresentation has been called the "celluloid ceiling", a variant on the employment discrimination term "glass ceiling". In 2013, the "...top-paid actors...made 2½ times as much money as the top-paid actresses." "[O]lder [male] actors make more than their female equals" in age, with "female movie stars mak[ing] the most money on average per film at age 34, while male stars earn the most at 51." In 2013, 9% of directors were women. A woman director won the Academy Award for Best Director for the first time when Kathryn Bigelow won for The Hurt Locker (2009).

Pay and representation

The 2013 Celluloid Ceiling Report conducted by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University collected a list of statistics gathered from "2,813 individuals employed by the 250 top domestic grossing films of 2012."

Women accounted for...

• "18% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors. This reflected no change from 2011 and only a 1% increase from 1998."
• "9% of all directors."
• "15% of writers."
• "25% of all producers."
• "20% of all editors."
• "2% of all cinematographers."
• "38% of films employed 0 or 1 woman in the roles considered, 23% employed 2 women, 28% employed 3 to 5 women, and 10% employed 6 to 9 women."

A New York Times article stated that only 15% of the top films in 2013 had women for a lead acting role. The author of the study noted that, "The percentage of female speaking roles has not increased much since the 1940s, when they hovered around 25 percent to 28 percent." "Since 1998, women’s representation in behind-the-scenes roles other than directing has gone up just 1 percent." Women "...directed the same percent of the 250 top-grossing films in 2012 (9 percent) as they did in 1998."

In 2015, Forbes reported that "...just 21 of the 100 top-grossing films of 2014 featured a female lead or co-lead, while only 28.1% of characters in 100 top-grossing films were female... This means it’s much rarer for women to get the sort of blockbuster role which would warrant the massive backend deals many male counterparts demand (Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible or Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man, for example)". In the U.S., there is an "industry-wide [gap] in salaries of all scales. On average, white women get paid 78 cents to every dollar a white man makes, while Hispanic women earn 56 cents to a white male’s dollar, Black women 64 cents and Native American women just 59 cents to that." Forbes' analysis of US acting salaries in 2013 determined that the "...men on Forbes’ list of top-paid actors for that year made 2½ times as much money as the top-paid actresses. That means that Hollywood’s best-compensated actresses made just 40 cents for every dollar that the best-compensated men made." Studies have shown that "...age and gender discrimination [together] can yield an even more significant wage gap." Young women actresses tend to make more than young male actors. However, "older [male] actors make more than their female equals" in age, with "female movie stars mak[ing] the most money on average per film at age 34, while male stars earn the most at 51."

According to actress Jennifer Lawrence, "...women negotiating for higher pay worry about seeming 'difficult' or 'spoiled.'"

Women's cinema

Main article: Women's cinema

Women's cinema is the work of women film directors and, to a lesser degree, the work of other women behind the camera such as cinematographers and screenwriters. Although the work of women film editors, costume designers, and production designers is usually not considered to be decisive enough to justify the term "women's cinema", it does have a large influence on the visual impression of any movie. Some of the most distinguished women directors have tried to avoid the association with women's cinema in the fear of marginalization and ideological controversy.

Alice Guy-Blaché made the first narrative film La Fée aux Choux in 1896. In Sweden, Anna Hofman-Uddgren debuted as the first female film director when she produced the silent film Stockholmsfrestelser in 1911.Lois Weber was a successful film director of the silent era. Women screenwriters included Frances Marion, Anita Loos and June Mathis. In the 1920s, large banks assumed control of Hollywood production companies. Dorothy Arzner was the only woman filmmaker in this era. Germaine Dulac was a leading member of the French avant-garde film movement after World War I and Maya Deren did experimental cinema.

Shirley Clarke was an independent American filmmaker in the 1950s. The National Film Board of Canada allowed many women to produce non-commercial films. Joyce Wieland was a Canadian experimental film maker. Early feminist films often focused on personal experiences. Wanda (1970) by Barbara Loden is a portrait of alienation. Resisting the oppression of female sexuality was one of the core goals of second wave feminism. Women's films explored female sexuality, including the films of Birgit Hein, Nelly Kaplan, Catherine Breillat and Barbara Hammer. Women film directors also documented the participation of women in anti-imperialist movements.

Director Kathryn Bigelow works in male-dominated genres like science fiction, action, and horror. She became the first woman to win both the Academy Award for Best Director and the Directors Guild of America Award in 2010 for The Hurt Locker. Catherine Hardwicke's films have grossed a cumulative total of $551.8 million. Her most successful films are Twilight (2008) and Red Riding Hood (2011).

Nancy Meyers has had success with her five features: The Parent Trap (1998), What Women Want (2000), Something's Gotta Give (2003), The Holiday (2006) and It's Complicated (2009) which have amassed $1,157.2 million worldwide. Before she started her directorial career she wrote some other successful films like Private Benjamin (1980) for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Baby Boom (1987) or Father of the Bride (1991). Sofia Coppola is a critically acclaimed director who has also had financial success. Her award-winning film Lost in Translation (2003) grossed over $119 million.

Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust (1991) was the first full-length film with general theatrical release written and directed by an African American woman. Since then there have been several African women who have written, produced or directed films with national release. In 1994 Darnell Martin became the first African American woman to write and direct a film produced by a major studio when Columbia Pictures backed I Like It Like That. Nnegest Likké is the first African American woman to write, direct and act in a full-length movie released by a major studio, Phat Girlz (2006) starring Jimmy Jean-Louis and Mo'Nique.

Women's films

Main article: Women's films

Bette Davis and Henry Fonda in Jezebel (1938), one of the quintessential woman's films. Davis plays a Southern belle who loses her fiancé (Fonda) and her social standing when she defies conventions. She redeems herself by self-sacrifice.

A woman's film is a film genre which includes women-centered narratives, female protagonists and is designed to appeal to a female audience. Woman's films usually portray "women's concerns" such as problems revolving around domestic life, the family, motherhood, self-sacrifice, and romance. These films were produced from the silent era through the 1950s and early 1960s, but were most popular in the 1930s and 1940s, reaching their zenith during World War II. Although Hollywood continued to make films characterized by some of the elements of the traditional woman's film in the second half of the 20th century, the term itself largely disappeared in the 1960s.

The work of directors George Cukor, Douglas Sirk, Max Ophüls, and Josef von Sternberg has been associated with the woman's film genre. Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck were some of the genre's most prolific stars. The beginnings of the genre can be traced back to D. W. Griffith's silent films. Film historians and critics defined the genre and canon in retrospect. Before the woman's film became an established genre in the 1980s, many of the classic woman's films were referred to as melodramas.

Chick flicks

Main article: Chick flicks

Chick flick is a slang term for the film genre dealing mainly with love and romance and is targeted to a female audience. Feminists such as Gloria Steinem have objected to terms such as "chick flick" and the related term "chick lit" and a film critic has called the term "chick flick" derogatory. It can be specifically defined as a genre in which a woman is the protagonist. Although many types of films may be directed toward the female gender, "chick flick" is typically used only in reference to films that emotion or contain themes that are relationship-based (although not necessarily romantic as many other themes may be present). Chick flicks often are released en masse around Valentine's Day. The equivalent for male audiences is the guy-cry film.

Generally, a chick flick is a film designed to have an innate appeal to women, typically young women. Defining a chick flick is, as the New York Times has stated, more of a parlor game than a science. These films are generally held in popular culture as having formulaic, paint-by-numbers plot lines and characters. This makes usage of the term "problematic" for implying "frivolity, artlessness, and utter commercialism", according to ReelzChannel. However, several chick flicks have received high critical acclaim for their stories and performances. For example, the 1983 film Terms of Endearment received Academy Awards for Best Screenplay, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

Notable individuals

Film directors

Main article: List of female film directors

According to Dr. Martha Lauzen, the executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, "If (white) men are directing the vast majority of our films, the majority of those films will be about (white) males from a (white) male point of view." The female presence in filmmaking is more significant than just employment, it contributes to a greater cultural issue. Even though there is a huge gender disparity in filmmaking, there are notable exceptions, women who have figuratively broken through the celluloid ceiling and become pioneers in their field. Leni Riefenstahl, Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Claire Denis, Sofia Coppola, Catherine Hardwick, Amy Heckerling, Julie Taymor, and Nora Ephron are some significant female names in filmmaking today and in history.

• Alice Guy-Blaché is considered to be the first ever female film director, as well as the first director of a fiction film. Blaché directed her first film in 1896, La Fée aux Choux and founded Solax Studios in 1910. Over her lifetime, "she directed between 40 to 50 films and supervised nearly 300 other productions".
• Kathryn Bigelow is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and television director. She became the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director for The Hurt Locker, the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing, the BAFTA Award for Best Direction, and the Critics' Choice Award for Best Director as well as the Saturn Award for Best Director.
• Jane Campion is a New Zealand film director, screenwriter, and producer. She is the second of four women directors to ever be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director, and was the first female director to win the Palme d'Or, the most prestigious award at the Cannes Film Festival.
• Catherine Hardwicke is best known as the director of the teen vampire romance film Twilight, with the highest grossing opening weekend of $69.6 million, the highest-ever opening for a female director.
• Amy Heckerling is best known for the films Fast Times at Ridgemont High, European Vacation and Clueless. She has been awarded the Franklin J. Schaffner Medal from the American Film Institute as well as the Crystal Award from Women in Film (WIF).

Cinematographers

About 2% of cinematographers are women. Notable cinematographers include:

• Sue Gibson (born 1952) is a British cinematographer and director of photography known for the film Mrs. Dalloway (1997). Gibson is also the first female member of the British Society of Cinematographers, and later became the first female president of the society in 2008.
• Nancy Schreiber (born 1949) is an American cinematographer known for her work on Chain of Desire, Dead Beat, The Celluloid Closet, November, and The Nines. During the 1990s, Schreiber was an adjunct professor at the American Film Institute and taught advanced cinematography. In 1995, she became an official member of the American Society of Cinematographers and was the fourth women to join it. Throughout her career, Schreiber has been on the Board of Governors of the American Society of Cinematographers, a board member of the Women in Film Foundation, and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She won the Women in Film’s Kodak Vision Award in 1997 and the Sundance Film Festival award for Excellence in Dramatic Cinematography in 2004 for her work on November.

Studio executives

Amy Pascal is the Sony studio chief and is the only female head of a major studio. In 1988, Pascal joined Columbia Pictures; she left in 1994 and went to work for Turner Pictures as the president of the company. In her first years at Columbia she worked on films such as Groundhog Day, Little Women, and A League of Their Own. When Pascal first started her career she was the Vice President of production at 20th Century Fox in 1986-1987. Before Pascal joined Fox, she was a secretary for Tony Garnett who was an independent producer with Warner Bros..

Organizations and awards

Alliance of Women Film Journalists

The Alliance of Women Film Journalists (AWFJ) is a non-profit founded in 2006 and based out of New York, United States, dedicated to supporting work by and about women in the film industry. The AWFJ is composed of 76 professional female movie critics, journalist, and feature writers working in print, broadcast and online media. The British Film Institute describes the AWFJ as an organization that collects articles by its (mainly US-based) members, gives annual awards, and "supports films by and about women". Beginning in 2007, the group began giving annual awards to the best (and worst) in film, as voted on by its members. These awards have been reported on in recent years by number of mainstream media sources including TIME, USA Today, and Variety, and are also included in The New York Times' movie reviews awards lists.

In 2007, AWFJ released a Top 100 Films List in response to the American Film Institute revision of their 100 Years, 100 Films list. The AWFJ created their list to see if their members would come up with a substantially different list from AFI. In addition to awards for achievement granted regardless of gender, the AWFJ has "Female Focus Awards" (Best Woman Director, Best Woman Screenwriter, Kick Ass Award For Best Female Action Star, Best Animated Female, Best Breakthrough Performance, Best Newcomer, Women's Image Award, Hanging in There Award for Persistence, Actress Defying Age and Agism, Lifetime Achievement Award, Award for Humanitarian Activism, Female Icon Award, and This Year's Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in the Film Industry) and "EDA Special Mention Awards" (e.g., Most Egregious Age Difference Between Leading Man and Love Interest).

New York Women in Film & Television

New York Women in Film & Television is a nonprofit membership organization for professional women in film, television and digital media. It works for women's rights, achievements and points of view in the film and television industry. It also educates media professionals and provides a network for the exchange of information and resources. It was founded in 1977 and brings together more than 2,000 professionals, including EMMY and Academy Award winners, who work in all areas of the entertainment industry. It is part of a network of 40 international Women in Film chapters, representing more than 10,000 members worldwide. It produces over 50 programs and special events annually; advocates for women in the industry; and, recognizes and encourages the contributions of women in the field.

Women Film Critics Circle

The Women Film Critics Circle is an association of 64 women film critics and scholars nationally and internationally, who are involved in print, radio, online and TV broadcast media. They united to form the first women critics organization in the United States, in the belief that women’s perspectives and voices in film criticism would be recognized fully. The organization was founded in 2004. The Circle has made annual awards, the Women Film Critics Circle Awards, since 2004.

Women in Film

Women in Film (WIF) is "a non-profit organization dedicated to helping women achieve their highest potential within the global entertainment, communications and media industries and to preserving the legacy of women within those industries. Founded in 1973, Women In Film and its Women In Film Foundation provide for members an extensive network of contacts, educational programs, scholarships, film finishing funds and grants, access to employment opportunities, mentorships and numerous practical services in support of this mission." WIF is a huge organization, offering bi-monthly networking breakfasts for women in the industry, internships, classes, competitions, a PSA production program, scholarships, and much more.

The Crystal and Lucy Awards were first presented in 1977 by the Women in Film organization. The awards include the Crystal Award, the Lucy Award, the Dorothy Arzner Directors Award, the MaxMara Face of the Future Award, and the Kodak Vision Award. The Crystal Award was established in 1977 to honor outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry. Dorothy Arzner was the first woman member of the Directors Guild of America. This award was established in her honor to recognize the important role women directors play in both film and television.The MAXMARA Face of the Future award was inaugurated at the 2006 Crystal+Lucy Awards, this award is given to an actress who is experiencing a turning point in her career through her work in the entertainment industry and through her contributions to the community at large. The Kodak Vision award is presented to a female filmmaker with outstanding achievements in cinematography, directing and/or producing, who also collaborates with and assists women in the entertainment industry. The Founder’s award was established in 1996 at the Lucy Awards and was first presented to Tichi Wilkerson Kassel. The award is given in recognition of distinguished service to Women In Film. The Nancy Malone Directors Award recognizes emerging women directors who have demonstrated a passionate commitment to filmmaking. The Women of Courage award was established in 1992 to recognize women who persevere through adverse conditions and circumstances in their quest for the rights of all women in the entertainment industry and society at large.

Women in Film and Television International

Women in Film and Television International (WIFTI) is a "global network comprised of over forty Women In Film chapters worldwide with over 10,000 members, dedicated to advancing professional development and achievement for women working in all areas of film, video and digital media." The organization was founded in 1973 in Los Angeles by Tichi Wilkerson Kassel and grew quickly worldwide, hosting their first Women in Film and Television International World Summit in New York City in September 1997.

Women's International Film and Arts Festival

The Women's International Film & Arts Festival (WIFF)is a "unique, cultural event featuring films, visual and performance arts and other artistic expressions by women." "Designed to promote women in the film industry and celebrate women’s accomplishments, the festival consists of panel discussions, workshops, and symposia. WIFF’s goals include empowering women of all ages to see themselves in a broader context."

WITASWAN and International SWAN Day

In 2002, Jan Lisa Huttner began an organization known as WITASWAN - Women in the Audience Supporting Women Artists Now, a grassroots movement to eliminate the celluloid ceiling. Combining efforts with the WomenArts Network, WITASWAN hosts and promotes International SWAN (Supporting Women Artists Now) Day annually, beginning in 2008. Over 700 celebrations worldwide take place on the last Saturday of March, bringing people together to celebrate women artists and filmmakers. The event is designed to promote awareness of women in film and the ways that people can support them by being educated film consumers.

Feminist film theory

Feminist film theory is theoretical film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory. Feminists have many approaches to cinema analysis, regarding the film elements analyzed and their theoretical underpinnings. The development of feminist film theory was influenced by second wave feminism and the development of women's studies in the 1960s and 1970s. Feminist scholars began taking cues from the new theories arising from these movements to analyzing film. Initial attempts in the United States in the early 1970s were generally based on sociological theory and focused on the function of women characters in particular film narratives or genres and of stereotypes as a reflection of a society's view of women. Studies analyzed how the women portrayed in film related to the broader historical context, the stereotypes depicted, the extent to which the women were shown as active or passive, and the amount of screen time given to women. In contrast, film theoreticians in England began integrating perspectives based on critical theory and drawing inspiration from psychoanalysis, semiotics, and Marxism. Eventually these ideas gained hold within the American scholarly community in the later 1970s and 1980s. Analysis focused on they ways "cinematic production affect the representation of women and reinforce sexism".

In considering the way that films are put together, many feminist film critics have pointed to what they argue is the "male gaze" that predominates in classical Hollywood filmmaking. Budd Boetticher summarises the view thus: "What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance." Laura Mulvey's influential essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (written in 1973 and published in 1975) expands on this conception to argue that in cinema women are typically depicted in a passive role that provides visual pleasure through scopophilia, and identification with the on-screen male actor. She asserts: "In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness," and as a result contends that in film a woman is the "bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning." Mulvey argues that the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan is the key to understanding how film creates such a space for female sexual objectification and exploitation through the combination of the patriarchal order of society, and 'looking' in itself as a pleasurable act of voyeurism, as "the cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking."

Coming from a black feminist perspective, American scholar bell hooks put forth the notion of the “oppositional gaze,” encouraging black women not to accept stereotypical representations in film, but rather actively critique them. Janet Bergstrom’s article “Enunciation and Sexual Difference” (1979) uses Sigmund Freud’s ideas of bisexual responses, arguing that women are capable of identifying with male characters and men with women characters, either successively or simultaneously. Miriam Hanson, in “Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female Spectatorship” (1984) put forth the idea that women are also able to view male characters as erotic objects of desire. In "The Master's Dollhouse: Rear Window," Tania Modleski argues that Hitchock's film, Rear Window, is an example of the power of male gazer and the position of the female as a prisoner of the "master's dollhouse".

Bechdel test

The Bechdel test is a 1985 gender analysis approach that is used to assess films. To pass the test, films must have at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named characters is sometimes added. Only about half of all films meet these requirements, according to user-edited databases and media industry press. The test is used as an indicator for the active presence of women in films and other fiction, and to call attention to gender inequality in fiction due to sexism. A study of gender portrayals in 855 of the most financially successful U.S. films from 1950 to 2006 showed that there were, on average, two male characters for each female character, a ratio that remained stable over time. Female characters were portrayed as being involved in sex twice as often as male characters, and their proportion of scenes with explicit sexual content increased over time. Violence increased over time in male and female characters alike.

According to a 2014 study by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, in 120 films made worldwide from 2010 to 2013, only 31% of named characters were female, and 23% of the films had a female protagonist or co-protagonist. 7% of directors are women. Another study looking at the 700 top‐grossing films from 2007 to 2014 found that only 30% of the speaking characters were female.

In 2013, four Swedish cinemas and the Scandinavian cable television channel Viasat Film incorporated the Bechdel test into some of their ratings, a move supported by the Swedish Film Institute. In 2014, the European cinema fund Eurimages incorporated the Bechdel test into its submission mechanism as part of an effort to collect information about gender equality in its projects. It requires "a Bechdel analysis of the script to be supplied by the script readers". The website bechdeltest.com is a user-edited database of some 4,500 films classified by whether or not they pass the test, with the added requirement that the women must be named characters. As of April 2015, it listed 58% of these films as passing all three of the test's requirements, 10% as failing one, 22% as failing two, and 10% as failing all three.

See also

• Women in the arts
• Women in dance
• Women in music

Further reading

• Anderson, Lisa M. Mammies no more: the changing image of Black women on stage and screen. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997.
• Benshoff, Harry M. America on film: representing race, class, gender, and sexuality at the movies. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004.
• Brunsdon, Charlotte (Ed). Films for women. London: British Film Institute, 1986.
• Butler, Alison. Women's cinema: the contested screen. London: Wallflower, 2002.
• Davies, Jude. Gender, ethnicity and sexuality in contemporary American film. Chicago, Il: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000.
• Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey. Women filmmakers of the African and Asian diaspora: decolonizing the gaze, locating subjectivity. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997.
• Haskell, Molly. From reverence to rape: the treatment of women in the movies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
• Thornham, Sue (Ed). Feminist film theory: a reader. New York: New York University Press, 1999.