Film is my passion. It has been for as long as I can remember – there have been weeks where a camera hasn’t left my hand. Going to college for something that special to me sounded like a dream before I got here, and honestly, it still is. I absolutely love my major. Learning about scriptwriting and camerawork and audio and editing gives me so much joy that sometimes, I could never think of doing anything else. Other times, however, it feels different.
Around my second semester is when I started really realizing I was one of the only girls in some of my classes…almost all of them, actually. I was in classes with around 20-25 people and there would only be 3-4 females in them. I thought at first that it didn’t make a difference. Whatever, right? We’re all on an equal playing field anyway. All of us are getting the same education at the same time for the same thing that we all really love. Gender doesn’t matter. And then I started to read articles and statistics about women in film.
Being a female in a male dominated major starts off as being kind of discouraging. I personally run into a lot of sexism. There are things that I will do or say the same way as a male, and it is regarded as “unladylike” or “weird” for a girl to do. People think that I won’t be able to handle certain topics or tasks. The worst part is that a lot of this comes from my professors. The people that are supposed to be teaching me and educating me and helping me forward myself in life are the ones discouraging me from going through with it.
Don’t get me wrong, these people know what they’re doing and they’re totally qualified to be professors. I learn a lot from them. But when I write a script and your first response is that it had some “unladylike language” in it, I’m not going to be totally open to learning from you. I also work in my department, and when a male professor totally disrespects me and thinks I’m not capable of doing something, and goes to my male coworker to do it, I’m not going to want to respect you.
But the thing about females in male dominated majors is that we learn differently than others. We learn to be even more proficient at what we do, because we need to be. We learn to be resilient. We learn to be strong and we learn to stand up for ourselves. We go through what we go through because we love what we do. End of story.
One day we won’t have to deal with gender discrimination between majors, but until then, it is important that we stick together and support each other. Don’t let people get you down, and don’t let anything stop you from doing what you love. It’s all worth it. You got this.