helen mirren tackles film industry sexism at empire awards

Image: Gage Skidmore

Helen Mirren made quite the impact at the 2013 Empire Awards when, during her acceptance speech, she spoke up about the sexism that is a trademark of the film industry:

‘I don’t want to unduly pick on Sam Mendes, but when he spoke about his inspirations earlier this evening, I’m afraid not a single one of the people he mentioned was a woman,’ Mirren said, according to The Guardian.

‘Hopefully in five or 10 years, when Sam’s successor is collecting their Inspiration Award, the list will be slightly more balanced in terms of sexual makeup,’ Mirren added. ‘In the meantime, this one is for the girls.’

After browsing the comments section of The Guardian, it seems that quite a few people took offence to this and thought that she was being unfair to Sam. After all, it’s not his fault that there just aren’t as many female directors.

But that was exactly Mirren’s point. Females tend not to be the ones directors list as their inspiration, simply because in the past, there were barely any female directors at all. It’s not a matter of ‘boys preferring boys’, it’s actually a matter of a huge structural problem in the industry. And one that looks sets to persist, apparently.

You see, after hearing Mirren’s speech, I became curious to know how many women were working as directors.

Thirty percent? Twenty percent?

Nope – a dismal nine percent^*.

But I mean, at least it must be getting higher, right? Right?! Well, according to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Films in their Celluloid Ceiling 2012 report, the number of women directors working on the top 250 films hasn’t changed since 1998 (though it has fluctuated- in 2011 it was only five percent).

That’s not to say that there aren’t awesome female directors working in Hollywood, because we all know there are. And they’re definitely directors worthy of being mentioned as inspiration when Sam’s predecessor takes the stage to accept their award in five or ten years. But one can’t help but worry that they will be lost in history amongst the equally talented but much more common male directors that the predecessor will have to choose from.

I’m not even going to pretend that I understand why there is such a ridiculous gap between the sexes in  the film industry, other than that the film industry is at least a few decades behind the rest of the modern world in terms of sexism. But that doesn’t account for there being no rise at all in the number of female directors working on the top 250 movies.

After all, it has been shown that movies directed by females do just as well at the box office as those directed by men. So the audience certainly isn’t fussed about which genitals the person who directed the movie has, nor does it impact on the quality of the film.

So it comes down a major flaw in the industry itself. And unless people like Mirren continue speaking up and letting the world know about it, it doesn’t look like a problem that is going to change any time soon.

^*Based on the Celluloid Ceiling 2012 report, with data pooled from the top 250 movies of that year.