A new film chal­lenges Hol­ly­wood to close the gen­der gap

Every year, with depress­ing depend­abil­i­ty, a new study is pub­lished that reveals what most of us already know: women, espe­cial­ly women of colour, are not well rep­re­sent­ed on-screen or behind the cam­era. Women have less speak­ing time and screen time than men. Female direc­tors are not get­ting sec­ond films green lit. Stu­dios are not hir­ing female writ­ers. Female crit­ics are vast­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed.

Direc­tor Tom Donahue’s new doc­u­men­tary This Changes Every­thing asks why these sta­tis­tics aren’t improv­ing or, if they are, why the film indus­try is mak­ing such slow progress. Talk­ing heads inter­views with some of the most pow­er­ful and respect­ed women in Hol­ly­wood, includ­ing Reese With­er­spoon, Natal­ie Port­man, Meryl Streep and Jes­si­ca Chas­tain, expand on why rep­re­sen­ta­tion is so impor­tant, as well as the obsta­cles they’ve faced to get female-cen­tric sto­ries on screen. ​“Film­mak­ing has his­tor­i­cal­ly told [women] no,” says Chas­tain. It’s hard to argue with her when the film then reels through clip after clip of pop­u­lar films with hor­ri­fy­ing gen­der politics.

The film explores the phe­nom­e­non iron­i­cal­ly known as ​‘this changes every­thing’: when the press pro­pos­es that cul­tur­al mile­stones will have a sys­tem­at­ic impact on how the film indus­try oper­ates. A recent exam­ple is Kathryn Bigelow, the first – and so far only – woman to have won the Best Direc­tor Oscar, for The Hurt Lock­er in 2009. Bigelow’s win was hailed as a sign of Hol­ly­wood recog­nis­ing female film­mak­ers’ works, yet since 2010 Gre­ta Ger­wig is the only female direc­tor to have been nom­i­nat­ed for the award.

To under­stand why women strug­gle to be heard in the film indus­try, we need to take a long, hard look into its past. Donoghue’s film points to the high num­ber of female direc­tors in the 1930s rapid­ly dimin­ished because of sound tech­nol­o­gy. The advent of sound meant films were required to be shot in stu­dios. Movies sud­den­ly had to make enough mon­ey to sup­port the stu­dio sys­tem. The moment films became finan­cial­ly viable, This Changes Every­thing argues, was when women were shut out of the industry.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. The film also looks at the women in the indus­try who have tak­en action. In 1983, when a group of female film­mak­ers dis­cov­ered that only 0.1 per cent of assign­ments by the Direc­tors Guild of Amer­i­ca were being giv­en to women, they took legal action against the Guild.

There’s also the real world impact of when on-screen rep­re­sen­ta­tion improves. Named the CSI Effect because of the direct cor­re­la­tion between the TV show’s pop­u­lar­i­ty and the spike in women pur­su­ing careers in foren­sics, data shows that what we see on our screens, espe­cial­ly as chil­dren, impacts the choic­es we make. The Effect famous­ly hap­pened in the ear­ly 2010s when The Hunger Games and Brave encour­aged more girls to take up archery and youth par­tic­i­pa­tion in the sport increased by 75 per cent.

Devel­oped just before the alle­ga­tions against Har­vey Wein­stein and the Time’s Up ini­tia­tive, This Changes Every­thing ends with opti­mism about the future. The documentary’s sub­jects point to two recent cul­tur­al mile­stones – Don­ald Trump’s elec­tion and the release of Won­der Woman – as spark­ing a reen­er­gised move­ment against Hollywood’s dis­crim­i­na­tion and for female-led block­busters. Donohue’s doc­u­men­tary might not change every­thing, but it cer­tain­ly makes a pow­er­ful argu­ment as to why every­thing in Hol­ly­wood needs to change.