It’s been a hot topic for the past couple years and certainly a big issue from the beginning: Hollywood isn’t an even-playing field for women.

A recent cover story in LA WEEKLY turned the gender inequality issue on its head with frank personal accounts within the industry, years worth of studies, and some staggering statistics highlighting the lack of equal opportunities for women in the business. Hollywood historians state that it all really began around WWII when the film industry was churning out more propaganda to “instill strong, traditional American family values” and glorify the strong, macho men who are protectors of their wives, children, and country. Then gender roles within films started spiraling into the confines of a stereotypical box that ended up shaping the way Americans view gender occupational dynamics (man goes out and works, he’s in charge, he’s the provider for his family – and woman stays at home taking care of the babies and cooking meals, being there for her husband). You know – one of those ‘life imitating art imitating life’ sort of things. But are we bouncing back from the dark ages of industry sexism and transitioning into a a world with more female representation in front of AND behind the camera? Here is a big, bold, scary infographic from the New York Film Academy about Gender Inequality in Film (2012). Keep scrolling and the numbers just get more staggering…

women in hollywood

A more recent finding – detailed in the aforementioned LA WEEKLY article – is that the inequality starts in the early phases: film school.

At top U.S. film schools, women and men are almost equally represented. Females account for 46 percent of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts graduate students. At New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, 51 percent of graduate students are women. Ten years ago, women filled about one-third of the seats. Yet between the day these women graduate and the day, a few years later, that their male college peers begin showing up in film credits, most women filmmakers vanish into obscurity.

Decades of effort have been poured into research on the lack of women behind the camera. But no studies examine the thinking, and the hiring choices, of the mostly male studio executives, top agents and other decision-makers. The two largest studies to date, both led by USC’s Smith, focus instead on results.

One of those studies, commissioned by the Sundance Institute and Women in Film Los Angeles, found that women and men who graduate from Sundance’s prestigious labs in Utah finish their films at the same rate and get their films accepted to the world’s top independent festivals at the same rate.

Then something unsettling happens. After competing at Sundance and other big festivals, the men who win awards are often tapped to direct for the Big Six: Disney, Universal, Warner Bros., Paramount, Sony and 20th Century Fox. But Big Six studio executives seem to ignore the award-winning female filmmakers, rarely inviting them to direct a picture.

The words “Boys Club” and “Sexist” are often the explanation behind the staggering statistics for underrepresentation of women in film, but is this slowly changing? While it is still certainly NOT equal, Backstage correspondent & casting director/producer Marci Liroff shared an interesting perspective on how even just THIS SUMMER’S box office displays some significant shifts in female representation. Here’s the allegedly game-changing information Liroff exposes in the Backstage piece:

Counting studio and independent releases, there are 12 movie comedies aimed at and/or produced mainly by women coming out this summer, according to Box Office Mojo. That’s more than the 10 ensemble, couple, or male-centric comedies on the slate for the summer.

Last year, just 12 percent of the starring roles in movies of all genres went to women, according to San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film. It’s even worse behind the camera. Of the top 250 movies last year, only 7 percent were directed by women, according to the Celluloid Ceiling study by the Center.

And according to the New York Times, the American Civil Liberties Union has “asked state and federal agencies to investigate the hiring practices of major Hollywood studios, networks, and talent agencies for what the organization described as rampant and intentional gender discrimination in recruiting and hiring female directors.”

On paper, it looks dismal for the future of women in media. The numbers certainly don’t lie. But look at what is already changing!

Director George Miller brought playwright Eve Ensler (“The Vagina Monologues”) to the set of “Mad Max: Fury Road” to talk about violence against women. Guess who the star of this movie is? Not Tom Hardy, but a woman: Charlize Theron.

So, what say you, readers? Do you think that the projection of this summer’s theatrical release forecast is any indication of a real change in the industry? As the article states, everyone is hyper-aware of the blatant sexism in Hollywood, and several celebrities – men and women alike – have candid personal accounts of the issue in their own careers. Gender equality is just logical, fair, and RIGHT all across the board. The film industry is where creativity meets business. Both genders bring a LOT of different things to the table in both arenas. From a more 2-dimensional standpoint, if women are buying the majority of movie tickets, it would make sense to have more women involved in the filmmaking process to even the playing field. We hope the numbers change. We strongly recommend reading up on current statistics and the articles we linked you to in this post! Always good to have a well-rounded perspective on things. We DON’T know if things are changing for sure or if it’s a fluke. What we DO know is that the industry – and the world, let’s be real – would be changed for the better if all treatment, respect, pay, and opportunities were equal between the sexes. For the record: Mad Max: Fury Road was ABSOLUTELY about Charlize Theron. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Looking forward to this summer’s movie lineup!