Just 16% of screenwriters in UK film are women, study finds
Writers’ Guild says number of women in film and TV has ‘flatlined’ and urges commissioners to ‘let women tell stories’.
Stats
- Almost eight in 10 companies and public-sector bodies pay men more than women[1]
- 8 million women were working full-time and 6.3 million were working part-time. 42% of women in employment were working part-time compared to 13% of men.[2]
- The gender mix in UK film casts has not improved since the end of the Second World War.
- In crews the gender mix has improved, but in some departments women still make up less than 10 per cent of senior roles.
- Female actors have tended to make fewer films and have had shorter careers than male actors.
- Unnamed characters who work in high-skilled occupations (e.g. doctor) are much more likely to be portrayed by men than women.
- Films that have one woman in a senior writing or directing role contain relatively more women in their casts.[3]
- The peak for female representation in film (when women made up 41% of casts) was over 100 years ago, in 1917.[4]
- In the 100 highest grossing live-action films in the US for the years 2014, -16, Google showed that men were seen and heard almost twice as often as women, with women occupying just 36% of screen time and 35% of speaking time.[5]
- Since 2005 only 16% of unnamed doctors in UK films have been played by women, despite women now comprising 52% of doctors on the UK’s General Practitioners Register.[6]
- In film schools, numbers are generally 50:50 men to women, there are equal opportunities and equal training. Women make up 50 per cent of all short films entered into festivals (according to Directors UK) but they seem to drop out, or are pushed out of filmmaking, later in their careers.
- In 2009, 19 per cent of all UK films had no women in any of the six key roles – director, writer, producer, exec-producer, cinematographer or editor.[7]
[1] Gender pay gap figures reveal eight in 10 UK firms pay men more, The Guardian 2018
[2] Women and the Economy, House of Commons Briefing Paper, 2018
[3] Women in film: what does the data say?, Nesta 2017
[4] The gender imbalance in UK film casts, Nesta 2017
[5] Google, in collaboration with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media
[6] #PressForProgress: Evidencing gender inequality in the arts, Nesta 2017
[7] Calling the Shots, University of Southampton 2018
Organisations
Women in Film & Television UK is the leading membership organisation for women working in creative media in the UK and part of an international network of over 13,000 women.
Bird’s Eye View is a year round agency that campaigns for gender equality in film Now in its 15th year, BEV spotlights and celebrates films created by women, and supports women working in film through training and events.
Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary Film Culture in the UK, 2000-2015 is a large Arts and Humanities Research Council funded (£589,710) four-year project researching and writing the contemporary history of women working in the UK film industry.
Club des Femmes is a queer feminist collective. They curate film screenings and events. Their mission is to offer a freed up space for the re-examination of ideas through art.
