Towards Gender Equity in the European Production
The round table ‘Towards Equity in European audiovisual production’ took place in Fundación Teléfonica, in a large room packed with general public and members of the industry in Madrid, in the context of the Festival Films by Women, which was celebrating its seventh edition.
With representatives of the Spanish ICAA, Deputy Director of Promotion Fernando Bigeriego, the Deputy Director of the Austrian Institute, Iris Zappe-Heller and Lise Perottet, General Coordinator of Le Lab, Femmes de Cinéma, and the moderation of Alexia Muiños Ruiz, Director of EWA Network, who opened the session by giving context information so that the audience could understand the impact of the equality measures that would be presented and discussed.
Alexia began the conversation by thanking the festival directors Carlota Álvarez Basso and Diego Mas Trelles for their efforts to bring to the public no less than 74 feature films from 28 countries with a retrospective dedicated to Austria, the country that is standing out for the gender incentive measures that have been applied by the Austrian Film Institute and whose third Film Gender Report would be presented.
Regarding the relevance of women in the industry, it is worth mentioning that the Spanish National prize for cinematography was awarded in 2024 to the producer María Zamora (Alcarrás, O Corno), joining other six women in the last 8 years, to balance the fact that in the first 32 years, the award only went to 7 women. Is the Industry trying to counterbalance a past that obvioulsy excluded women?
Iris Zappe-Heller, ÖFI deputy director and current EWA Network board member, dedicated her introduction to motivating positive actions for greater inclusion and bringing as many points of view and sensitivities as possible to the European audience. If you can see it, you can be it! Then, she presented the key findings of the excellent 3rd Austrian Gender report which complements the gender incentives they are implementing.
KEY STATEMENTS
Source: Austrian Flm Institut Gender report
» Mixed progress with cinema films : For all cinema films, the number of female-driven films rose to just over one-third since the last report.
» Traditional role models among department heads: Women continue to be underrepresented in technical departments such as lighting (8%), film sound (14%) and camera (20%) in addition to core departments production (35%), script (41%) and directing (43%). However, the Gender Incentive, an initiative of the Austrian Film Institute to empower women, has provided significant support for this change.
» Still too few woman cinematographers!. A closer look at the causes for the fact the percentage of
women in the camera department is still a very low 20% shows that in 2012–2021, male core crews worked almost exclusively with male cinematographers.
» Women show independent female characters more often: In female-driven fiction films released in 2012–2021, 58% of the main characters were women, while the figure was 44% in maledriven films.
» Young women, fathers, and occasionally queer men
» Migrant main characters: underrepresented and often poor. In cinema fiction films, 13% of the main characters had a migration background. However, this applies to 26% of Austria‘s population, twice the percentage.
» Rich characters and those who are academics are overrepresented: More than one-quarter of the main characters in Austria‘s current fiction films are in a higher social class, more than double the figure
in the country‘s population.
» Men explain the world and the focus is on male lives: Women appeared less frequently as narrators or experts in documentaries than men, and only about one tenth of all films released in 2012–2021.
» Sexism and division of labor typical for gender roles in documentaries.
» Disability, LGBTIQ+, migration and multiple discrimination: representation vs. discourse: Solely one-fourth of all documentaries examined which were released in 2012–2021 depict a majority or equal number of the points of view of protagonists from underrepresented groups.
» Percentage of women who receive film funding has risen but is still too low at 33%
» The TV sector is still dominated by men. No female-driven TV-series projects at all were approved for funding, and not even every twentieth TV fiction-film project was female driven.
In representation of the Spanish ICAA, Fernando Bigeriego explained in detail the point system to projects led by women, and with women in key positions and underrepresented positions in the ICAA funding applications. Furthermore, he mentioned there is a specific budget allocated for projects directed by women. Despite these positive measures, the average budget for a film directed by a woman in Spain in 2023 is 1.5 million euros, and that directed by a man is 2.9 million euros.
Key facts:
Since 2020, a share of the total grants budget must be give n to projects by female directors.These quotas differ according to thetype of funding granted by the ICAA
●35% of the total"general aid" budget is reserved for projects by women directors
● 40% of the total" "selectiveaid"budget is allocated to projects by women directors
●In 2023, 41.9% of Spanish-produced feature films had female participation in their direction or screenplays
●25.9% of Spanish feature films produced in 2023 were directed or co-directed by women and directed exclusively by women 24%.
This ambitious and unprecedented measure should have significant impact on the average share of film directed by women over the next years.
According to data from the latest CIMA report on representation in the Spanish audiovisual industry, presented at the San Sebastian Festival, women are 38% represented in the Spanish audiovisual industry, with a notable increase in female directors of photography with 19% (an increase of 8 percentage points) and female composers and FX technicians, with 30% (an increase of 17 points). The percentage of female producers and editors rose to 31% and that of screenwriters to 35% (an increase of 13 points).
These positive figures are in line with the measures that the ICAA has been implementing for some years now.
Lise Perottet, general coordinator of Le LAB, presented the activities which have been carried out since its creation in 2017, linked to the Festival des Arcs. Since 2020, le Lab has been relying on statistics from the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO), and are therefore concentrating on purely qualitative work. She announced the 2024 report to be presented in the next Festival des Arcs while she shared facts from the 2023 report.
Before presenting the highlights of this 2023 study onefact remains fairly constant from year to year: the reluctance of countries to implement quotas. Indeed, 11 institutes have introduced moderate quotas, i.e. favouring films directed by women for films of equal quality, 3 countries have implemented hybrid quotas(Austria, Norway and the UK),but only Spain has introduced quotas for film financing.
QUALITATIVE STUDY ON THE PLACE OF FEMALE DIRECTORS IN EUROPE in collaboration with EFAD and EAO
Source: Study of the Lab Femmes de Cinéma https://www.ewawomen.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Etude-du-Lab-2023-EN-Synthèse.pdf
If women are underrepresented and discriminated against in cinema, it is in part because of the gender stereotypes and structural exclusion mechanisms that are still in place. In order to overcome these two barriers,stereotypes must be deconstructed and pave the way for more women filmmakers by putting in place more proactive structural movements.
Theirs study aims to detail and present the policies and measures adopted to improve on the persisting inequalities, and to promote the place of women and marginalised people in cinema in every European country
Growing participation in an increasingly recognised study
This year, Le Lab contacted 37 countries, 36 of which responded to their questions. This is an increasing response rate, in line with recent years (32 responses in 2022 and 2021, 14 in 2020). In 2023, only one country did not respond to our requests. The majority of the Centres contacted recognise the importance of this study (70% say it is "very useful" or "extremely useful").
Countries committed to parity and taking action
In 2023, the vast majority of European countries are committed, at various levels, to parity in the film industry: only 5 countries have not introduced or do not plan to introduce measures to promote parity in their industry (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine).
A total of 35 countries have introduced or plan to introduce measures to promote parity. Among them are those that have been involved in these issues for a long time, continuing and deepening their work over the long term (like Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, etc.) and those that have joined the movement more recently. No fewer than 10 countries have launched, or plan to launch in the next few years, their first collection of gendered data. Collecting data is one of the first steps towards quantifying inequalities in the sector, and therefore a form of awareness-raising that generally leads to declarations of intent and the implementation of measures to promote gender diversity in the industry.
Several highlights emerge from their 2023 study
● Some of the major trends are a continuation of our 2022 study:
○ integrating parity into an overall search for gender diversity ;
○ combating sexist and sexual violence;
● Someofthese trends are of interest to a growing number of institutes:
○ supporting parenthood ;
○ Raising awareness of the need for support, right from the application stage;
● Finally, we note the rise of new trends:
○ developing support for women filmmakers throughout their careers;
○ working on representation and combating unconscious bias, particularly among members of the institutes' selection committees