Hollywood Film Could Also Serve

¶ … Hollywood film could also serve as a headline for an article on the role of gender in Hollywood. Women do relatively well in some positions in the film industry. Female stars -- Angelina Jolie, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts -- pull in almost as much as their male counterparts. But once one takes a look behind the camera, the picture is much less equitable. Women are dramatically outnumbered in the ranks of writers, producers, technical designers, and directors. The fact that it took until 2010 for a woman to win the Oscar for best director is only one sign of how thick the glass ceiling is in Hollywood. But why should this be? One answer to that -- in contradiction to the title -- is simple: Sexism, even misogyny. But why sexism should be so strong in Hollywood is itself complicated. In this paper I examine the factors that make it so difficult for women to succeed as film directors.

Despite Kathyrn Bigelow's win for directing the Hurt Locker, the chances for women succeeding (or even being selected) as directors of commercial Hollywood films are small indeed:

Although successful female directors appear to have gained higher profiles of late, the actual percentage of top films directed by women has remained static for 25 years at 7% to 9%, according to an annual study of women writers, directors, and producers of the 250 top-grossing films of the year by the Center for the Study of Women in Film and Television at San Diego State University. (Abramowitz, 2010)

Ironically, part of the problem for women directors may be that women in the film industry may themselves be reluctant to admit that there is a problem. This is a not-uncommon factor in sexism and racism: Because these are such powerful forces in American society, sometimes those who are the victims of either sexism or racism or both are reluctant to name the form of their oppression lest it lead to increased oppression. (I am not using the word "victims" here to imply that women and people of color are passive in the face of the bigotry that they face but rather to emphasize the severity of their situation.)

Abramowitz (2010) outlines the reluctance of women directors to talk about how their gender may or may not affect either their chances of succeeding in terms of the business side of film-making or the kind of film that they make:

But gender is a touchy subject for many women in Hollywood. Anne Fletcher, who directed the box office smash "The Proposal" as well as the hit "27 Dresses," says, "I never think of gender, ever. For me, I've never in my entire career experienced sexism."

"It must be some kind of glass ceiling. I look at women studying law or medicine. They sit for the exams, and they get the result," and they get good jobs. But she says she doesn't give it much thought.

"I just see [the films] as my work," she said. "I think every filmmaker or artist comes from that point-of-view. My guy friends don't say, 'This is my masculine work.' Of course, [films] are going to be an expression of everything about you, but it's limiting or ghettoizing to always say, because [you're a woman], that first you're a woman filmmaker."

It is no doubt true that identifying oneself as a "woman director" rather than as a "director" is problematic for the person involved. But it is also true that not identifying women directors as such may make it hard for women as a group to make progress in the film industry. It is hard to fight a social problem such as sexism -- or racism, or poverty, or corporate greed -- if one cannot even name it (Roth, 2006/2009).

I used the plural for "factors" above because explaining the paucity of women movie directors requires us to look at more than one realm of society. Women as directors break rules in several categories. While women have achieved somewhat greater parity in other fields -- law, for example, where women still usually have to struggle to make senior partnerships but where some have succeeded -- it is still more difficult for women than for men to succeed in business. And film-making is, of course a business. Investors as well as studio heads may well be less inclined to back a female director, and without money a director cannot make a film, no matter how grand, sophisticated, or witty her vision.

The difficulty that women directors face in getting financial backing may reflect the relative lack of women investors. The fact that there are fewer female investors than male is one demonstration of the ways in which sexism runs through American culture and the ways in which it creates negative feedback loops for women. Women business leaders -- in film as well as in other fields -- do not get as much support as male directors so their business prospects seem dimmer, which leads in turn to reduced support.

And because it is more difficult across all business fields for women to make the high salaries that men do, women have less money to invest in business projects. Women are more likely to invest in projects headed by other women, but they lack the money to do so on the scale that male investors do. This, in turn, means that fewer women succeed in business, which means that there are fewer women who have the money to invest in women-header research projects -- and so on. (Some of these same issues are documented by the National Committee on Pay Equity.)

The following citation describes this phenomenon in England, but the same dynamics apply in the United States:

The scheme is also designed to help women entrepreneurs -- whose businesses are on average funded with a third less capital than their male counterparts -- by specifically encouraging investment in female-owned firms. "We are trying to help build confidence in women entrepreneurs to ask for the money they need," says Goodsell. "A woman entrepreneur will only ask for £20,000 when she really needs £100,000."

She believes it's intimidating for a woman to ask a group of male investors for funds -- particularly for a "female" product. "A group of female investors might be more understanding, saying 'I'd use that product' and see the opportunity where a man might not." (Hanson, 2007)

The investors quoted in the above article are generally split between those who deny that there is anything gendered about the products or services that they are involved in and those who have targeted a specifically female market. Mostly the latter have had success.

That kind of success has not been available to women directors in Hollywood. This is another aspect of sexism that explains the ways in which women succeed and fail in the film industry. Women are to some extent suspect as business and organizational leaders. That is, investors or studios may not believe that they can bring in a satisfactory level of return and studios may further distrust women directors ability to carry the immensely complex task of organizing a film. But there seems to be another layer of sexism that may be even more important that the above two.

The kinds of cultural product that is given precedence in American society is by default male in many ways. It is surely no accident that Bigelow won her award for a movie that is about a quintessentially male subject -- or rather a story that layers different masculine stories on top of each other. This is a story about war and danger and courage and male bonding. (Ironically, James Cameron, Bigelow's former husband, made an anti-war film that is in many ways more traditionally feminine in its perspective. He could get away with that in large measure because he did not have to prove his own toughness.)