It’s been more than a year since the #MeToo movement began, and women in the film industry have yet to see the equality they’ve repeatedly been promised. At the Sundance Film Festival last week, this issue was again brought up, and a small mote of progress was made thanks to Time’s Up, an organization that advocates for victims of sexual harassment in the workplace.
In collaboration with the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, they announced the “4 percent challenge,” which challenges Hollywood studios to produce one female-directed film in the next 18 months. Named after a study that found that women have only directed 4 percent of the highest-grossing films of the past decade, the challenge seeks to make the industry more inclusive and representative.
The Time’s Up movement’s challenge was created with good intentions, and it has already inspired several celebrities and a few studios to pledge to work with more women directors. But it also feels insulting to women in film.
Its design as a special challenge not only suggests that funding and supporting women’s films is a “challenge” that studios essentially have to be “dared” to undertake, but it also furthers the false view that films made by women cannot possibly be “mainstream” and are a “niche” interest.
If female-directed films are no different from male-directed films, why do these studios have to make special exceptions to hire female directors? Why aren’t they just making these female-directed films on a regular basis?
It’s also lame that Time’s Up has set the bar so low. The initiative is supposed to double the number of women directors in the industry, but that still won’t accomplish equity. It would have been more radical — and meaningful — if they had gone full out, calling on studios to produce an equal number of films directed by male and female directors.
Two of the studios that signed on, Universal and MGM, also could have pledged to go above and beyond this meager challenge and sign even more women. They certainly have the wealth and influence to do so.
There’s absolutely no reason why Hollywood shouldn’t be producing more films made by women. There are plenty of women ready and waiting for the opportunity to direct for the big screen. The idea that female-directed films are some sort of special interest genre is also entirely false.
It would be more accurate to say that women have been relegated to directing smaller-budget indie films. Of the six largest studios in the industry, only one has a female CEO. And it’s hardly as though women’s films are a “risk” to undertake because they won’t be successful. Consider “Wonder Woman,” “Frozen,” “Selma” and “Lady Bird,” all of which were critically acclaimed box office hits directed by women.
Sure, the “4 percent challenge” is better than no progress at all, especially in an industry that has, until now, made what feels like zero effort to raise up women’s voices. Women directors are still rarely nominated for directing awards, and very, very few have ever won.
Kathryn Bigelow remains the only woman ever to win the Academy Award for best director, and Barbra Streisand is the only woman to ever win a Golden Globe in the directing category. Streisand’s win was 35 years ago.
So it’s certainly about time that women finally get the opportunities and recognition they deserve. While this initiative should encourage actors, writers and others in the industry to work with more women directors, we’ve waited far too long to settle for such measly progress.
I hope that another big studio comes forward soon with plans to go above and beyond the “4 percent challenge,” ideally by ensuring that women direct half of the films they produce. It would send a powerful message to an industry that repeatedly proves they do not value films made by women despite the evidence proving that women’s films are just as successful as those made by men.
A studio taking this big step would mark true progress in the sea of faux statements of solidarity and female empowerment that have filled awards ceremonies over the past few years. We need those in the industry to do more than just wear black on the red carpet to support #MeToo or make a speech preaching about gender equality that goes viral for a day.
We need real, radical progress now if women ever hope to achieve equality in the industry. And this “4 percent challenge” won’t achieve that.
