In the wake of International Woman’s day, I thought it was appropriate to discuss the lack of females hired in film in calibration with nominations for awards, whether that is behind the scenes or in lead roles.
As an aspiring female Film Actor, I would love to see women having more of an opportunity in the Film industry!
It is always refreshing to see women perform the strong and confident characters in film, which are stereotypically played by males (especially if it’s the lead). Women are usually co-leads, the mother, the wife and if the lead, are stereotypically in romantic comedies.
As an audience, we have seen these strong, brave, smart and loyal characters as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, Mulan, or Hermione Granger in The Harry Potter series.
A recent example is the new Captain Marvel female-led film, played by Brie Larson, released earlier this month on International Women’s Day.
It’s inspiring that this film is the first female-led superhero solo-movie within the Marvel universe and it completely breaks female stereotypes such as weak, gentle, emotional and submissive. Captain Marvel displays superhuman strength, endurance, speed combined with bravery and intelligence.
While this database shows that in 2018, there were 40 out of the top 100 films which had female lead roles. It also shows that within the top 100 grossing films of 2018, women only comprised of 16% of behind the scenes roles including executive producers, writers, producers, directors, editors, and cinematographers.
Another database proves how low female presence in film production really is within the last decade.
So, this increase means women can be nominated for more awards within film, right?
Unfortunately no, that is not the case. Women are barely nominated in genderless categories like “Best Director”, “Best Cinematographer” or “Best Editor”. I would love to see the nominations spread between all ethnicities and genders in every category. I don’t think that is a lot to ask to be honest, women in history have proved to be as creative, intelligent, trustworthy and dedicated as men.
The Academy Awards (The Oscars) and The Golden Globe Awards are two hugely publicised and talked about awards shows where males dominate the nominations.
I am not saying that men shouldn’t get nominated and win, because men are highly creative and have filmed captivating movies. I just genuinely want to see women be nominated for Best Director or Best Feature Film more often.
Last year, we did see Lady Bird filmmaker Greta Gerwig become the fifth woman is history to be nominated for Best Director at the Oscars. However, there has only been one woman, Katheryn Bigelow, to win Best Director for her 2008 film The Hurt Locker at the Oscars in 2009.
Conclusion
We can see that there is a definite increase of women hired in the film industry, but why hasn’t it aligned with an increase of nominations? Obviously, there is certainly more that goes on behind closed doors. But I am open-minded and hopeful, that there will be more women in film for years to come.
Let me know your opinions and leave a comment.
Film Lovers 