Why Film Needs Women

Joseph Nicikowski
Mar 25, 2022
3 min read

The Wrong Kind of Women, by Naomi McDougall Jones, dives into the active exclusion of women in the film community, which stops their voices from being present in one of the most influential mediums of the 20th and 21st centuries. The book covers class action lawsuits, broken promises, and many damning statistics that have been overlooked for far too long. One heartbreaking statistic showed that roughly half of the graduates at film schools are female, though there is more than a 64 percent drop-off between graduation and making their big break. Only 18 percent of micro-budget films are female lead (McDougall Jones, 88) , including women who didn’t attend school, but the original goal of most filmmakers is to make it to the director level of their department of choice, making this drop questionable at best. Why are we letting women get locked out when they are crucial to cinema?

We can add women to the screen as much as we want, but their lack of presence behind the scenes has an even more profound effect on cinema as a whole. From adults to children, most people derive some sense of their belonging from the people they see on screen. Seeing a woman written from a man's perspective can be damning to people; it can change how they view each other or themselves. Proper representation of women, by women, throughout the cinematic process is essential.

A modern example of the need for more women in film is Pixar's recent release Turning Red. This fantastic film exploring a thirteen-year-old girl’s search for control and individuality in the early 2000s has gotten some backlash for one momentary scene. Many people have talked about how uncomfortable it is to hear people discuss periods in a kids’ film. Have we seen such little representation that we still cannot talk about the everyday life of women and girls? This makes me think of the season two finale of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, set in the 60’s, when she is abruptly ripped from the stage for talking about the turmoil of pregnancy. This scene depicting the inability of men to handle hearing about women has seemed to find its way into our twenty-first-century way of thinking. Mothers take to Twitter exclaiming that their 4-year-old son wasn’t interested in Turning Red, but “Yeah Betsy, your son isn’t the demographic of a film about a thirteen-year-old girl.” Some people even discuss their daughters feeling uncomfortable watching the film. I wonder why a girl might feel uncomfortable watching a coming-of-age movie with their mom about a girl defying their strict mom. For a movie taking place twenty years ago, it still holds a mirror up to many families today.

This is why we need to have more female lead films. The conversations they bring to the world are crucial to moving forward. People find Turning Red inappropriate, but we need to have these conversations with kids today. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, film can shape the minds of whoever views it. To have open discussions about the health and wellbeing of girls lends them a hand and shows them that these conversations are possible. These conversations were needed back in the times The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s based in. At that time women needed to hear from one another to break up the narrative they had been given from their parents, whereas girls should be able to learn accurate developmentally-appropriate information about themselves with their families. We’re making progress, but there's still much change needed. Helping one another can end the years of generational trauma in Turning Red. Every generation was going through the same experience, but no one ever did anything about it. Not until Mei Mei discovered that she had a path she wanted to take, and was given the support she needed.

We need women in film because there is no way to learn and understand their experiences without them. There won’t be any growth for our generation or generations to come with men guiding every upcoming blockbuster. As a send-off to National Women’s Month, watch female lead films and have a conversation about the world with the women in your life.

Please check out The Wrong Kind of Women by Naomi McDougall Jones and see all the hard work she put in to spread the word of how the film industry needs to change.