Why Women Directors Are Shut Out Of Hollywood

By Maria Giese

In the art world, the work women do is often assigned merit by subjective, arbitrary, and almost always misogynistic judges and critics.  Film and television is much more democratic.  If a film or a TV show does well, few audience members care at all about the gender of the director.

So, what’s keeping women from directing the top TV shows and film scripts?   What’s preventing women directors from access to the big budget productions?   It’s simple.  The power establishment in Hollywood is made up mostly of men, and men want to keep the power.   Let’s say it straight: it’s a gender war for control over resources.

Recently a high-level leader at the Directors Guild of America told several women directors that if they fight for gender parity, they will be waging war.  They will be threatening to take the food off the tables of men– stealing food from the mouths of men’s families.

Women directors have families too, and they are fighting hard right now– harder than they have in 30 years– and the issue is heating up everywhere in the industry.  Let’s take a look at what happened the last time women directors took a stand…

When the DGA Women’s Steering Committee was officially established in 1979, women comprised just ½ of 1% of episodic TV director employment.  One half of one percent—and that ½% was IDA LUPINO: “Fellow Directors and Mrs. Lupino.”

The DGA Women’s Steering Committee was established as a result of the efforts of just six women DGA members who brought on the groundbreaking DGA-led, class-action lawsuit against three major studios in 1983.  Even though two years later the Guild was disqualified from leading the class due to discriminatory policies within the DGA itself, the legal action directly influenced a striking surge in the number of women TV directors.

By 1995, just 10 years later, the percentage of TV episodes directed by women had risen from ½ of 1% to 16%.  Sixteen percent!   The only reason this lawsuit was possible was because of the crucial support the DGA leadership—especially executive director, Michael Franklin— provided women Guild members.

Unbelievably— today, almost 20 years later, that number has done something extraordinary— it has gone down.  Today, only 12% to14% of TV episodes are directed by women— an astounding reversal during a time of unprecedented industry growth and abundance.  Why?

The Problems:

In part, the problem lies in the squandered opportunities by the individuals who are in leadership positions in both the studios and the Directors Guild of America.  The DGA is the only entity in America that really has the power to demand gender equity among directors in our industry.  Why has the Guild backed so far away from the tenets of the early leadership demonstrated by Michael Franklin?

What about the women who are currently in leadership positions in the DGA?  The women who have enjoyed the lion’s share of episodic TV directing jobs in the past decades since the lawsuit (after 1985)?  Who are they?  What have they done to encourage more women through the door to TV directing?

Almost every woman director who is currently a DGA leader got her start after the lawsuit, and therefore benefitted directly from the hard work and personal and professional sacrifices made by the Original Six who founded that committee.  Indeed, since all DGA diversity committees and DGA efforts to support ethnic minority hiring, emerged from the work of these women, even the new DGA President, Paris Barclay, benefitted from that work.

Now, in 2014, as the numbers slip ominously backwards, the current DGA leadership and even DGA diversity program leaders seem oddly resistant to demanding the same sort of change that allowed them to succeed.

Road to Solutions:

Women directors cannot move forward until they fully understand why their leaders are failing to take on the power establishment that has so impeded the potential of this generation of women filmmakers, and profoundly threatens the next.

When they can answer those questions, they can begin to move forward again.  Until then, women will stand at rigid loggerheads, because the many voices of Americans who care about lawful employment equity individually have little power when the DGA leadership and the Hollywood establishment are working in opposition to employment equity for women directors.

Let’s give women directors the chance to prove themselves.  Let’s provide a level playing field, so it’s not just guys in the endless line-ups for best films and best directors.  Frankly, it’s getting a little tedious.

Originally Posted on January 16, 2014