A report by The University of Southampton has revealed that only one fifth of the production personnel working on films in 2015 were female.
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project – entitled ‘Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary Film Culture in the UK’ – also found that women from black and ethnic minority backgrounds made up only 1.5% of all film workers.
The study also discovered that women were most prominent in producer roles, at 27%, but concluded that the “vast majority of key production personnel in the UK film industry are still men.”
Speaking to Screen about the importance of this research, Women in Film and Television’s chief executive, Kate Kinninmont said:
“This is a crucial piece of research laying bare the grotesque discrepancy between the sexes in the film industry. Equal numbers of men and women enter this industry but women are relentlessly squeezed out. Black and minority ethnic women have the hardest time of all. It is the film industry itself which suffers from this, with a narrowing of its vision and an impoverishment of its creativity.”
The project, which began in September 2014, is lead by Dr. Shelley Cobb and Professor Linda Ruth Williams. Other members of the team include Natalie Wreyford, Sarah Smyth, Ania Ostrowska and Dr. Beth Carroll.
For more information on the project, visit their page on the Southampton website.
Watch the trailer for Suffragette – a film written, directed and produced by women – below.
