Saturday, February 22, 2014

Barely a statistic.

The Oscars are coming up soon. The Golden Globes are behind us, and the Emmy’s aren’t too far into the distant future. According to an annual study done by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, out of the 2,938 people that worked on the top 250 (domestic grossing films) in 2013, sadly, only 16% of them were women. Of that statistic only 6% of those women were directors. These numbers are actually a decline from previous years. Out of these numbers the majority of women are working in the drama, comedy, and documentary genres. It’s rare to find women directors, producers, executive producers, cinematographers, editors, and writers in the sci-fi, animated, action, or horror genres. According to the Directors Guild only 14% of women directors, directed TV episodes in 2013. Tragically of the 200 shows reviewed last year, 38 of them didn’t even hire any women.

According to the Huffington Post, within the business world, only 16.9% of board seats belong to women, and 10% don’t even have any women on the board. Even though statistics show that 85% of women make up the consumer buying decisions. It would seem if you wanted to know a better way to increase sales, profit, etc., you would diversify your board to find out what the 85% would want. Or one would think?

Even with those grossly shattering statistics there are numerous women, within those industries, fulfilling their dreams. Sheryl Sandberg, Jill Abramson, Oprah Winfrey, Anne Sweeney, Susan Wojcicki, Bonnie Hammer, Ellen DeGeneres, Sue Naegle, Diane Sawyer, J.K. Rowling, Kathleen Kennedy, Kathryn Bigelow, and Megan Ellison (just to name a few). These women range from CEO/COO’s of major networks/companies, entrepreneurs, writers, to Hollywood directors and producers.


According to an Indiewire blog the new Gamechanger Award will be given out at SXSW (South by South West). This award will be given to a female filmmaker, with a grant of $2500 as a prize. Gamechanger Films was founded to invest in women directors of feature films.  They are trying to close the gap between 50% of females, who graduate from some type of film school, to only about 5% moving forward into Hollywood directing.

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