Gender and the Screen

The push for gender diversity

For decades, initiatives have been introduced to promote gender equality - particularly fairer representation of women - in Australia’s screen industry. One of the most notable strategies is the most recent.

In October 2020, Screen Australia released the latest KPI tracking data for their Gender Matters funding initiative.

Version one of the Gender Matters program commenced in 2015 and was a five-point, $5 million initiative designed to create further opportunities for women in film and television production, particularly in behind the camera roles. This came after Screen Australia released historical data of women's unequal participation in the industry in 2015.

In August 2019, Screen Australia exceeded their version one target of having at least 50 per cent of ‘key creative’ roles filled by women, across half of the productions which received funding (based on a three-year average) (see Figure 1).

In this case, ‘key creative’ roles were represented by the four positions of director, producer, writer and lead on-screen talent.

Version two of the initiative began in late 2019, with the aim to have 50 per cent of the key creatives throughout all projects that receive Screen Australia development and production funding to be women, across a three-year-average. For this target, ‘key creative’ roles changed to only director, writer and producer.

The latest results indicated Screen Australia is on track to meet its target, with 57 per cent of key creative roles across projects receiving development and production funding held by women and female-identifying people in 2019/20 (see Figure 2).

The initiative, whose Taskforce is currently chaired by Joanna Werner, began before the arrival of the MeToo movement. Once the movement took hold, it only spurred on Gender Matters.

“When the MeToo movement started, it definitely placed a lot of focus on gender and gender issues within the film and television and screen industries. We were well poised to be already discussing that and putting that forward,” Joanna said.

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

The general consensus among industry professionals is that Gender Matters has been a successful initiative and a good starting point.

The tracking period of the second version runs until 2021/2022.

Other programs and initiatives currently underway include FREE THE WORK, the #whoisinyourcrew campaign and the work of the Natalie Miller Fellowship which focuses on encouraging women into screen leadership positions.

There’s also the success of female-driven films, which have significantly helped open the door for other women’s stories in the industry. The Dressmaker, produced by President of the Natalie Miller Fellowship, Sue Maslin, is one of Australia’s most successful films, taking in more than $20 million at the box office.

“It opened the way for films like Ride Like a Girl. It opened the way for Sue Milliken to get Ladies in Black made. She and Bruce Beresford have been trying to make that film for 20 years. They got it made the year after The Dressmaker came out,” Sue said.

From the male perspective

It’s not only women who are frustrated with the slow progress towards equality in the industry. There is a growing awareness among male creatives of the need for gender diversity.

“It is so obvious to me that it’s been a ludicrously male and inequitable society for women for so long. That has to shift, that has to change,” screenwriter and producer Andrew Knight said. Andrew has worked on the award-winning productions Rake and Hacksaw Ridge, The Water Diviner and Ride Like A Girl.

For screenwriter and author Christian White, most of the men he has worked with are “well aware” of the issues surrounding gender diversity in the industry. Throughout his career so far, he has often found himself working with women, including the film Relic which received funding from Screen Australia as part of the Gender Matters initiative.

“It’s certainly important to me [to have] gender diversity in our screen industry,” he said. “It’s sort of a representation of who we are and what we’re doing and what we mean. If that voice is male, you’re really just getting half the story.”

What more needs to be done?

From the Natalie Miller Fellowship’s push for women in screen leadership and Head of Department roles, to the need for implicit bias training, to changing production hours to better fit in with family life, ideas of solutions from the interviewed creatives came thick and fast.

More than anything, though, they came back to the need for women to take it upon themselves to demand diversity.

“Gender equality programs, and I’m in total favour of them, can only go so far. It has to come down to women going, I'm not going to take it,” experienced journalist, producer and now co-founder of Media Mentors Australia, Denise Eriksen said. An attitude of standing up for herself was a hallmark of her career which saw her land Head of Department roles at the ABC and SBS.

For cinematographer Katie Milwright, she identified a similar “single-mindedness” to her career as the key to not letting any gender-based barriers stand in her way.

As Lisa French, Dean of Media and Communication at RMIT University and the only academic on the Gender Matters taskforce said, “in order to get diversity, you have to insist on diversity”.

Fundamentally, the initiatives and actions striving to increase female participation in the industry are working towards a dream.

A dream explained to us by Sue Maslin, and essentially desired by all the interviewed creatives:

“My dream is that in 10 years’ time, we won't even have to do interviews like this. There will not be the question, 'do we need to do more for women on screen and women behind the camera?', because it'll just be the norm. That's my dream.”