Another awards season has come and gone, this one filled with black dresses, impassioned speeches, and a boatload of statues for a certain amphibious romance. And although silver screen stars like Allison Janney, Frances McDormand, and Saoirse Ronan got their well-deserved accolades, women are still vastly underrepresented in the less visible parts of the film industry. Women make up a little over half of the US population, but accounted for only 18 percent of directing, writing, producing, executive producing, editing, and cinematography roles on the top 250 domestic grossing films last year, according to the 20th annual Celluloid Ceiling report by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.
“The film industry has utterly failed to address the continuing underemployment of women behind the scenes, said Martha Lauzen, director of the center. “This negligence has produced a toxic culture that supported the recent sexual harassment scandals and truncates the careers of so many women.”
Additionally, only one percent of the top grossing films of 2017 staffed 10 or more women in key behind-the-scenes roles, as opposed to the 70 percent that employed 10 or more men. Thirty percent had one or no woman in those roles. And, films with exclusively male directors seem to be a boys club. A look at the top 500 films showed that in those with only male directors, women accounted for just 2 percent of composers, 3 percent of cinematographers, 8 percent of writers, and 14 percent of editors. In female-led films those figures jumped to 12 percent, 15 percent, 68 percent, and 32 percent, respectively, according to the report.
The percentage of women in high-powered roles in the film industry in 2017 is just one percent higher than it was when the first Celluloid Ceiling report was tallied 20 years ago. Last year, women accounted for 11 percent of directors, about the same level as in 2000. The 2017 figure was up 4 percent from 2016, but Lauzen said 2016 was a particularly poor year for women as directors. “Because fewer women directed films in 2016, it would not be surprising to see the percentage rebound in 2017 as a part of the normal fluctuation in these numbers,” she said.
