I vividly remember the moment in 2010 when Kathryn Bigelow won Best Director for The Hurt Locker, not just because it was the first time a woman had ever won that award, but because it was the first time that I actually thought I could achieve my dream of being a successful film director. In 88 years of the Oscars, four women have ever been nominated for Best Director. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the lack of racial diversity in the Oscars nominations is not a problem. However, the lack of diversity is not just in the acting categories, and it’s not just racial. This bias of the Oscars and the movie industry, in general, extends behind the camera as well and impacts every minority.
My sophomore year at Drew, I asked my teacher for help when I was thinking about directing a student film. I had emailed the professor, but in the middle of class when everyone else was working on their computers, he called me to his desk and told me because I hadn’t taken the video class yet, he wasn’t comfortable helping me with my project. I was a little upset because I was taking it the next semester, but I understood why he was saying no: it was an academic reason. I returned to my seat and he called another student up, one of the only men in our class and said:
“I know you haven’t taken the film class yet, but please let me know if you need any help on your project, I would be happy to help you.”
Maybe he just liked the other student better. Maybe he thought the other student had more potential or better skills than I did. I don’t know what he was thinking that day, but I can’t help that feel like his bias may have been influenced by my gender.
It is proven that women behind the camera in Hollywood are given less opportunities; according to Forbes magazine, of the top 100 grossing films in 2014 women made up only 1.9 percent of directors, 11.2 percent of writers, and 18.9 percent of producers. Directors are the creative leaders of the cinematic process, communicating with every other artist involved in the project to understand and interpret the message of the film. This makes directors and producers the real authority figures of the industry, positions that are usually reserved sociologically for men. As such, women filmmakers are biased against and become used to hearing the words “no” or “you can’t do that” or “why don’t you hold off on that idea?”. Between the negative pressure from the industry and the insistence from my friends that I am going to be the next woman to win an Oscar for Best Director, the same thought always runs through my mind: why me? We all want to break that glass ceiling, but none of us want to risk breaking ourselves in the process.
I recently watched a TED talk by Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani who says that societally, we are teaching our boys to be brave and our girls to be perfect. This results in more and more grown women not wanting to take the plunge into pursuing their dreams because they’re afraid of failing. I started to realize how true that was in my own life. I’d been told that I couldn’t be a woman filmmaker for so long that I had started to believe it.
I’m not sure that I’m ever going to win an Oscar. I’m not sure that I’m even going to go into commercial film. However, I am sure that whatever I do, I am not going to let the societal gendering of specific jobs stop me, and other women shouldn’t as well. The entertainment industry supports the image of men as in positions of power and, most importantly, CONTROL over women each time an awards show occurs. We can do something about it, though. We can prove that we can be strong and powerful too, so we can receive the recognition we deserve.
