Gender inequalities are present in many areas and the 7th art does not escape this reality. After the study conducted by the CNC in 2017, the subject is once again raised by the Annenberg-USC Think Tank Foundation, which has been conducting a study on the subject for ten years.
Published in July, the annual survey of the Annenberg-USC Think Tank Foundation struggles to show improvements in parity in the film industry. Focusing on the 100 most popular films of the year in the United States, it shows that American productions leave little room for women. On average, only 31.8 percent of the characters speaking in these films were women in 2017, up from 29.9 percent in 2007. An evolution that leaves something to be desired, especially since of these 1100 films analyzed in 10 years, only 43 involved female directors.
The study also highlights the sexualization of female roles compared to their male colleagues: in 2017, 28.4% of female characters wore sexy clothes, while this proportion was only 7.5% of men.
And we're not really better off on our side of the Atlantic. In 2017, the CNC (Centre National du Cinéma et de l'Image Animée) had also pointed the finger at the subject, unveiling the results of a study on "the place of women in the French film and audiovisual industry", between 2006 and 2015. The study proved the persistence of inequalities in this environment. Indeed, of the 300 films studied by the CNC in 2015, 63 were directed by women (compared to 232 by men and 5 mixed productions). However, there is still a trend in favor of parity, especially on the side of screenwriters and technicians, who between 2006 and 2014 increased their workforce by 20%. A much bigger change than in the United States, where women have a hard time finding a place for themselves.
And then in France, film professionals are trying to make things happen. In an article in Le Monde published last February, a collective of professionals of the seventh art pleaded for the creation of quotas in the financing of cinema. Among them, Juliette Binoche, Agnès Jaoui, Charles Berling and Alexandra Lamy, who campaign for parity.
Outside France, some countries, such as Sweden and Ireland, have chosen to adopt the quota system, setting the objective that within three years 50% of subsidies will go to projects led by women. The results are already there, with the proportion of female directors rising from 16% in 2012 to 38% in 2016.
We know that there is still a long way to go, but mentalities are waking up more and more on the subject, whether it is cinema or any other form of art, and we can only congratulate the progress since talent has no gender.
