Why Doesn't Hollywood Reward Female Directors?

Women directing successful, big-budget feature films seems to be a rarity, but why is this? Even rarer is a woman picking up an award for directing. Do women not have an interest in directing, or is it a sexism problem within the industry?

Since the first Oscar statues were handed out in 1929, only five women have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, and even worse, only one woman (Kathryn Bigelow) has won. Following suit, the Golden Globe for Best Director has only been won by one woman (Barbra Streisand), with only five women being nominated. Despite the current conversations surrounding the gender pay gap, #MeToo, and #TimesUp, Hollywood is still choosing to disregard the accomplishments of women by snubbing them during awards season.

Kathryn Bigelow with her Oscar for Best Director
for The Hurt Locker (2008). (source)

While it looks like things may be changing, with the likes of Greta Gerwig, Ava DuVernay, Patty Jenkins, and Dee Rees all directing successful, award nominated films in recent years, they are yet to get due recognition for their directing talent. Their films portray well-rounded, strong, interesting female characters that audiences are clearly interested in and give young women role models to aspire to. In an historical moment, Gerwig was nominated for Best Director at the 2018 Academy Awards for her work on Lady Bird (2017), yet was snubbed at the Golden Globes where each of the directing nominees were male. Actor Natalie Portman was quick to point this out when presenting the award for Best Director, stating "and here are the all-male nominees" (2018). 
The stark reality of the lack of women in directing roles has been brought forward in the Directors UK 2016 Cut Out of the Picture report, which outlines many shocking figures and statistics. In the study, it was found that of 2,591 UK films released between 2005 and 2014 "just 13.6% of working film directors were women." (2016). Even more disturbingly, throughout the almost ten year study period, this number had only risen by 0.6%. The study also found that on average, female directors were less likely than their male counterparts to be hired for a second, third, or fourth directing job, with many directing fewer films throughout their careers.

Looking from the ground up, Directors UK found that 50.1% of film students and 49.1% of new entrants into the film industry were women, however, that figure is drastically cut down to 3.3% of women who are hired to direct big-budget (£30+ million) feature films. The study found that at every budget level, the amount of female directors decreased.

Infographic on (in)equality in the Film Industry. (Directors UK)

These findings from the Directors UK report show that there is a deep rooted problem with sexism in the film industry that needs to be taken care of. If more women were hired as directors, there would be better female representation within the field, the idea of what a director is wouldn't be attached to a specific gender, and the film and TV industry would no longer use gender as a factor in the employment process (2016, pp. 10).

This issue has been raised in the US with an investigation by the federal government into the discrimination of female directors in Hollywood, and thanks to the findings by Directors UK, the BFI will implement a 50:50 gender balance in major changes to its Film Fund process on 1st April 2018. Further changes in representation will also include "setting essential targets for BAME representation (20%) LGBTQ representation (9%) and disability representation (7%)." (2017).

Hopefully these much needed changes to the way in which women are thought of and treated in the industry will help encourage the employment and success of female directors. These changes have the ability to herald a new dawn for women in film, where talent and hard-work is rewarded over gender, and it won't be that surprising for a woman to win, let alone be nominated for a major industry award.