Gender inequality in the UK film industry

A major new study into inequality in the UK film industry has been released, and it makes for grim reading.

- Women are poorly represented within directors of UK films: of 2,591 films released between 2005 and 2014, inclusive just 13.6% of working film directors were women. Additionally, there been very little increase of female directors in that period. In 2005, 11.3% of UK films had a female director and in 2014 this had only increased by only 0.6% to 11.9%

- Female representation is poor across most of the UK film industry: disparity between men and women goes beyond director positions, Of the main key head of department roles, two had greater than 50% female representation with the rest ranging between 6% and 31%

- Public funding for female-led films dropped significantly: In 2007, 32.9% of films with UK-based public funding had a woman director, but by 2014 that had dropped to just 17.0%.

The report is certainly worth a read, as it goes on to outline the reasons why gender inequality exists and crucially, ways in which it can be tackled. Such as a proposal for target of 50/50 gender parity within public funding by 2020 and requesting that industry professionals "stop using gender to calculate a director's 'credibility'" - a fine idea!

Read the summary findings or download the report in full, here.

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