A recent study by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University brings a seriously special feature presentation that you don’t want to miss.
The Celluloid Ceiling, an annual study which tracks the behind-the-scenes employment of women in the top 250 films released each year, is the longest running study in film available. An article by the Huffington Post last year revealed that females held only 17 percent of powerful roles—directors, writers and producers—in film. What’s even more shocking, however, is that this number had remained unchanged since the study began in 1998.
Rock those beats, Elizabeth.
Despite an increase to 19 percent in today’s findings, an exceptionally skewed ratio of male-to-female professionals exists in the motion picture hierarchy. Exceptional talent, like Elizabeth Banks (Pitch Perfect 2) and Sam Taylor-Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey) made up just 9 percent of directors of the top 250 domestic grossing films, as revealed by Cosmopolitan.
Since 2015, the percentage of women writers has remained the same, while a 2 percent increase in female directors, producers, editors and cinematographers matches the initial findings in 1998. In fact, women account for only 11 percent of writers working on the top 250 films of 2015, which reveals a slight decrease since 1998.
This means that today’s silver screen, featuring Marjane Satrapi’s The Voices, Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behavior, and Maya Forbes’ Infinitely Polar Bear, houses as much female talent as it did 18 years ago when Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail, Brenda Chapman’s The Prince of Egypt, and Betty Thomas’ Doctor Doolittle were first released.
Executive director of The Celluloid Ceiling, Martha M. Lauzen, Ph.D., notes that recognizable changes, especially in the world of film, take time. Her data collection seeks to provide the raw material necessary to not only change the behind-the-scenes and on-screen gender dynamics in film and television, but also to “[integrate] more women into vitally important storytelling roles,” as stated on the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film’s website.