Catalan women filmmakers claim a gender quota now
Catalan Women Filmmakers have spoken clearly: there’s too much imbalance between the number of women graduating from film schools and those directing a film within the industry.
Local Administration having turned down their proposal for Gender equality measures (a document which includes a progressive quota for projects with women at their helm, aimed to reach a 40% budget distribution rate to female-led projects by 2020 and it had been agreed with the audiovisual sector), these women have started a Social Media campaign (#ClausulaCIMA #ElCineEnsNecessita) to draw attention to the lack of women in decision making positions in the film industry.
Alongside other associations of Women in Arts and Culture, the Catalan women Filmmakers demonstrated past July 19th in the heart of Barcelona asking the Local Government "Where are women in Film, in Arts, in Science?"
The current gender policy in Spain is not working at all. By using a system which awards one point for women as either writers or directors, in the last 3 national ordinary calls for funding, only 3 women-directed projects out of 49 have received support. This goes to show how ineffective this gender policy based on giving ranking points to female projects instead of using quotas is.