Women in the International Film Industry Policy, Practice and Power
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Women in the International Film Industry Policy, Practice and Power Edited by Susan Liddy Women in the International Film Industry “Being the Director of a program whose goal is to bring more female voices and female-focused stories into mainstream media, this book is sorely needed. My students are always bemoaning how little women are mentioned in the major texts of screenwriting history that they have used in their coursework and they long for books like this that represent the world they will enter and give them the support to make the changes necessary for all artists to succeed at telling a range of stories.” —Rosanne Welch, Executive Director, Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting “This is an important collection that helps us to think about and navigate the film industry and its ongoing inequalities. It has international scope, showcasing a range of places, policies and perspectives. And most crucially, it centres the voices and stories of women, both on- and off-screen.” —Bridget Conor, Senior Lecturer in Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London “This project couldn’t be more timely. Liddy’s collection of essays on women in film is geographically all-encompassing, with contributions from across Europe as well as Australia, New Zealand, Nigeria and the United States. Taken together, they reveal how much we hold in common when it comes to addressing gender inequalities. Key questions emerge around the effectiveness of quotas, access to finance, career sustainability, and the power of role models. Most importantly, the writing style is uniformly accessible; arguments are backed up with data, and the message is clear—we can make it happen and we must.” —Ruth Barton, Head of School of Creative Arts, Trinity College Dublin “Women in the International Film Industry: Policy, Practice and Power makes an important contribution to our understanding of the scope and scale of gender inequality in the global film industry in the twenty-first century. This vibrant, timely, and comprehensive collection by leading academics draws from a range of disciplinary and methodological approaches to interrogate the ongoing interna- tional struggles to document and redress systemic gender inequality throughout the film value chain. The authors offer an advanced analysis of the gendered dynamics of work and labour markets, and the feminist activism and policy frame- works that shape them, that will be of substantial intellectual and practical value to scholars, film professionals, activists, and policy-makers for many generations.” —Amanda Coles, Deakin University, Australia “Over the last several years the movement for inclusion in the film industry has gained international momentum and one key to that growth has been research and data. Women in the International Film Industry: Policy, Practice and Power, edited by Susan Liddy, is an important tool in the push for equality, orga- nizing real data from across the globe—because change does not happen in a vacuum. These important analyses give the activists in each country the ammu- nition needed to hold decision makers accountable in the fight for equitable distribution of access and opportunity.” —Melissa Silverstein, Founder/Publisher, Women and Hollywood. Co-Founder/Artistic Director, Athena Film Festival. Founder, The Girls Club Susan Liddy Editor Women in the International Film Industry Policy, Practice and Power Editor Susan Liddy MIC University of Limerick Limerick, Ireland ISBN 978-3-030-39069-3 ISBN 978-3-030-39070-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39070-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa- tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover design by eStudioCalamar Cover image: bjones27, Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland For Fin, Hilary and Yvonne. Each, in your own way, a ‘believing mirror’. Thank you. For Joe (Oisin) Liddy, 1932–2020. Gone but still with us in a myriad of ways. May it always be so. Contents The Gendered Landscape in the International Film Industry: Continuity and Change 1 Susan Liddy Europe Gender in the Austrian Film Industry 21 Eva Flicker and Lena Lisa Vogelmann Where Are the Female Creatives? The Status Quo of the German Screen Industry 43 Elizabeth Prommer and Skadi Loist With Eyes Wide Open: Gender Equality in the Polish Film Industry 61 Greta Gober The Road to 5050: Gender Equality and the Irish Film Industry 77 Susan Liddy vii viii CONTENTS Gender Equality in British Film-making: Research, Targets, Change 97 Shelley Cobb and Linda Ruth Williams Gendered Representation in Danish Film 111 Tess Sophie Skadegård Thorsen To Change or Not to Change? Women and Gender Equality in the Finnish Film Industry 131 Tarja Savolainen From Edith Carlmar to Iram Haq: Women in the Norwegian Film Industry 149 Anette Svane Experiencing Male Dominance in Swedish Film Production 163 Maria Jansson and Louise Wallenberg Out in the Cold? Women Filmmakers in Iceland 179 Guðrún Elsa Bragadóttir Women in the Italian Film Industry: Against All Odds 197 Bernadette Luciano and Susanna Scarparo Gender Struggles in the Portuguese Film Industry 213 CarlaBaptistaandAnaPrata North America Hollywood and Gender Equity Debates in the #metoo Time’s Up Era 235 Courtney Brannon Donoghue Gender Advocacy in Canadian Film and Television: Are Women Finally Breaking Through? 253 Susan Brinton and Sharon McGowan CONTENTS ix Australia and New Zealand Gender Still Matters: Towards Sustainable Progress for Women in Australian Film and Television Industries 271 Lisa French Aotearoa New Zealand: A Tale of Two Nations 293 Marian Evans Nigeria Women and Representations in Nollywood: Questions of Production and Direction 315 Agatha Ada Ukata Index 331 Editor and Contributors About the Editor Susan Liddy lectures in the Department of Media and Communication Studies in MIC, University of Limerick. Her research interests and publi- cations relate primarily to gender issues in the Irish and international film industry; motherhood and the film industry; the work of Irish female writers/directors and representations of older women in film and tele- vision. Her publications have appeared in journals such as Feminist Media Studies, Sexuality and Culture and in various edited collections. Susan is editor of Women in the Irish Film Industry: Stories and Story- tellers (2020). She is currently researching (with Anne O Brien and Páraic Kerrigan) how gender and diversity policies are promoted and imple- mented by broadcasters, training bodies and production companies in Auditing gender and diversity change in Irish media sectors,aproject funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. She is also co-editing a collection on motherhood in the international audio-visual industries. Susan is Chair of Women in Film and Television Ireland and an advisory Board member of Women in Film and Television International. She is a Board member of the Writers Guild of Ireland and Chair of their Equality Action Committee (EAC). She is also a Board member of Raising Films Ireland, established in February 2020. She is the founder and co-director of Catalyst International Film Festival in Limerick, Ireland, a festival that xi xii EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS prioritises work from underrepresented groups, in front of and behind the camera. Contributors Carla Baptista is Professor in Communication Sciences at NOVA FCSH in Lisbon and a Senior Researcher at ICNOVA. She is also a freelance journalist and a member of the editorial board of the Portuguese edition of the newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique. She is the author of several books, including Journalists, from the Craft to the Profession (2007), Living Memories of Journalists (2009) and Death and Resurrection of Political Journalism (2011). She has written chapters for several books, namely Gender in Focus: New Trends on Media (2016), Feminine Poli- tics (2018) and Press, Political Crisis and Coup in Brazil (2019). Her research interests include media and journalism history; media, gender and politics and media and culture. She is currently working on a project funded by the Portuguese Science Foundation on Portuguese journalism history, including women’s press publications across the century. Guðrún Elsa Bragadóttir is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University at Buffalo. She graduated with a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Iceland in 2011 and an M.A. from the same department in the spring of 2013. Her B.A. thesis focused on the subgenre of the maternal melodrama in 1930s and 1940s Hollywood, while she wrote her M.A. thesis on the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s experimental use of the melodramatic mode. In 2016, Guðrún Elsa graduated with an M.A.