Are women interested in directing their careers towards those positions and actively doing something about it? Are there more men in certain positions because there are just simply more men gravitating in that direction and women are gravitating elsewhere? I also believe in the best person for the job regardless of gender or whatever else. I don't want to put a person ahead of anyone else simply because they happen to be of a certain gender etc. I don't feel comfortable with allowing positions to be open only for a specific gender etc and not allowing someone who is actually better qualified for the job to have access to that position. I do think that issues regarding women would be better suited to a woman but in saying that not all women are the same and have the same ideas or understandings of what all other women are going through. Someone career driven and who chooses to forgo having a family may have no clue what other challenges other women are facing. A man with a sister or wife etc who is going through certain challenges may even have better insight to those types of things than a woman who might not have a clue. The same can be said at the other end of the spectrum. A traditional homemaker type may have no clue about the challenges of the work world and in the middle the women who want to have it all and struggling with everything. Trying to get that balance of understanding across the board will depend on the individual candidate and their lives and experiences and those around them.
http://www.nylon.com/articles/emma-watson-sexism-numbers
Further reading http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/sep/27/sexism-film-industry-stories?channel=us
Sexism is when a male refuses to be directed by a woman. He is totally backward harking to the days of the man is the head of the household/family and the woman obeys him. He is in charge so it is that there are a few relics of this kind of thinking out there somewhere and we are gobsmacked when it surfaces. We are in that intermediate zone where we are trying to move ahead and forward. We have come from a time where things were different but we are not fully in the next phase where all traces of the past are definitely in the past. There are still some people who have grown up a certain way and hold certain views and passing that down to the next generation. It is about education and educating that we are moving forward and times are changing and it is for the better. Women are and should be treated equal and expect to be treated as equal and nothing less. It is about free choice, if we want to be traditional or have family and career or put career first. We shouldn't judge others for not choosing the same path.
Being directed by however many men as opposed to women don't mean that those male directors are sexist. They could be really great guys and treat women as equals. They have chosen their jobs and might be really good at their jobs. The question is, why are there not more female directors? What is going on there that there are not more of them?
As Sarah Gavron points out one of the reasons there are so few female directors is because having a family makes it difficult. The job requires travelling and long periods away. Having a partner to stay home and look after the children is helpful but then the woman would be away from her family. The man might have his own job or need to travel for that job. Women usually get relegated to staying home to look after the family. I wouldn't want to be away from my family for long periods of time. I'd want to be more like Angelina Jolie and have more of a gypsy travelling family lifestyle and bring them with me. It is great that Sarah's partner stays home to take care of their children or can bring the children and go along with her and that works for them but that isn't going to work for everyone else. Sometimes it is a choice not everyone can make or they decide what is more important to them and go with that. I would think in most cases family comes out on top. It takes a really driven person hence why there are fewer of them to take on such work that pulls them away from their family. It is why women are more and more choosing to delay starting a family and putting their careers first so they don't have that pull and they can concentrate on one thing and give it their all rather than try to split their time and effort between the two and feel they are not doing their best at either. Young mums could begin their careers after the children have grown.
Emma talks about how some women are predjudiced against other women and I don't disagree. My two adopted rescue cats are both female and when I took them to the vet for the first time to get their vaccinations he asked me if they get along alright as females are known not to get along as well as a . male and a female together. I even read that in a children's book about pet rabbits my son borrowed from the library. I don't feel to fuss over the numbers of males compared to females. If we get along and there are no dramas then I am fine. My cats Jemimah and Queen Latifah didn't get along so well at first. They would swipe each other Queen Latifah would hide behind or under the sofa. I spent the first week or so trying to put them on the sofa next to each other. They weren't up for it at first but then when one was sitting there already the other would jump up and sit next to her. Now they are best friends and are pretty good, they snuggle and snooze and lick each other. Not so often they swipe and I tell them to stop and they stop and usually settle and stay together. Sometimes in the morning they drive me nuts running around the house chasing each other and hiding and trying to swipe each other but they seem more to be playful.
Director Lexi Alexander recalls the time a driver refused to drive her because he was told to wait for the director whom he naturally assumed would be male. It is those innocent natural assumptions that get men labelled as sexist. For how many years they and women have been taught it is a man's world. Then again anyone could have jumped in the car. How was he to know who the director was? If a male collegue had hopped in the car would he have immediately driven off to the destination? Or would he wait for confirmation of the correct passenger? If someone doesn't know who the director is then there is going to be that awkward conversation of "I'm waiting for the director" (cue awaiting confirmation) "Oh that's me" (alternatively become offended because you assume that he assumes straight away that the director would naturally be a man) "Nice to meet you, how are you today, where are we off to?" type thing. Maybe he did naturally assume the director was going to be a man and it was a simple innocent mistake or maybe he did have a sexist negative attitude or maybe he was trying to ascertain confirmation of his specific passenger and it all went downhill from there? I really don't know. It can be so easy to accidentally offend someone without trying and that is not what you were setting out to do but just the opposite. Sometimes it says more about the person who became offended, their complexes or insecurities or just other past experiences, laments or unfulfillment. Certain triggers just set them off. How ironic the destination was to executives who decided they didn't want a female who had experience as an international competitive fighting champion to direct their boxing film and would rather go with an unqualified male with no experience in the subject matter. I would have thought her experience would have impressed them a great deal but no they sound like definite sexist fools. I thought the head on Sony Pictures was a woman? After a quick google it looks like I'm thinking of Amy Pascal who was replaced by Tom Rothman. If the head of a movie company was a woman it just baffles me of all the sexism further down the chain. She was a woman, head of the company and running the whole show. She was that general.
I suppose story telling is kind of an artistic job. Artistic jobs are never considered as important as service jobs or science jobs. It isn't saving lives or making technological advancements etc. Unfortunately artistic jobs aren't taken as seriously or considered to be serious. Story telling is able to get points of view and a message out to a broad audience and in turn help to change minds and attitudes. It can be a useful tool in this way for social awareness and change and that in itself can be important to change and improves lives and the world. It isn't real life actions to implement any actual change but it is the beginning process of within hearts and minds which inspire others to initiate real changes in the real world off of the screen. Storytelling can be an important or even vital part of that process.
When I read Amma Asante's example of sexism which she experienced I was like Wow! Someone school that fool! That sounds like a really old school view. I had previously read a little about old beliefs that geared towards the same position he had. Here is some more info as to why he might say such a thing
"The rites were often governed by old women, due to the ancient belief that post-menopausal women were the wisest of mortals because the permanently retained their “wise blood.” In the 17th century A.D. Christian writers still insisted that old women were filled with magic power because their menstrual blood remained in their veins.61 This was the real reason why old women were constantly persecuted for witchcraft. The same “magic blood” that made them leaders in the ancient clan system made them objects of fear under the new patriarchal faith.
Because menstrual blood occupied a central position in matriarchal theologies, and was already sacer-holy-dreadful-patriarchal-ascetic thinkers showed almost hysterical fear of it. The Laws of Manu said if a man even approached a menstruating woman he would lose his wisdom, energy, sight, strength, and vitality. The Talmud said that if a menstruating woman walked between two men, one of the men would surely die.62 Brahmans ruled that a man who lay with a menstruating woman must suffer a punishment one-quarter as severe as the punishment for Brahmanicide, which was the worst crime a Brahman could imagine. Vedic myths were designed to support the law, such as the myth that Vishnu dared copulate with the Goddess Earth while she was menstruating, which caused her to give birth to monsters who nearly destroyed the world.63
This was patriarchal propaganda against the Tantric Maharutti (“Great Rite”), in which menstrual blood was the essential ingredient. In Kali’s cave-temple, her image spouted the blood of sacrifices from its vaginal orifice to bathe Shiva’s holy phallus while the two deities formed the lingam-yoni, and worshippers followed suit, in an orgy designed to support the cosmic life-force generated by union of male and female, white and red.64 In this Great Rite, Shiva became the Anointed One, as were his many Middle-Eastern counterparts. The Greek translation of Anointed One was Christos.
Persian patriarchs followed the Brahman lead in maintaining that menstruous women must be avoided like poison. They belonged to the devil; they were forbidden to look at the sun, to sit in water, to speak to a man, or to behold an altar fire.65 The glance of a menstruous woman was feared like the glance of the Gorgon. Zoroastrians held that any man who lay with a menstruating woman would beget a demon, and would be punished in hell by having filth poured into his mouth.66
Persian religion incorporated the common primitive belief that the first onset of menses must be caused by copulation with a supernatural snake. People not yet aware of fatherhood have supposed the same snake renders each woman fertile and helps her conceive children.67 Some such belief prevailed in Minoan Crete, where women and snakes were sacred but men were not. Tube-shaped Cretan vessels for pouring oblations represented a vagina, with a serpent crawling inside.68 Ancient languages gave the serpent the same name as Eve, a name meaning “Life”; and the most ancient myths made the primal couple not a Goddess and a God, but a Goddess and a Serpent.69 The Goddess’s womb was a garden of paradise in which the serpent lived.
Phrygian Ophiogeneis, “Snake-born People,” said their first male ancestor was the Great Serpent who dwelt in the garden of paradise.70 Paradise was a name of the Goddess-as-Virgin, identified with Mother Hera (Earth), whose virgin form was Hebe, a Greek spelling of Eve. Virgin Hera parthenogenetically conceived the oracular serpent Python, of the “Womb-temple,” Delphi.71 Snakes living in the womb of Mother Earth were supposed to possess all the wisdom, being in contact with the “wise blood” of the world.One of the secrets shared by the primordial woman and her serpent was the secret of menstruation. Persians claimed menstruation was brought into the world by the first mother, whom they called Jahi the Whore, a Lilith-like defier of the Heavenly Father. She began to menstruate for the first time after coupling with Ahriman, the Great Serpent. Afterward, she seduced “the first righteous man,” who had previously lived alone in the garden of paradise with only the divine sacrificial bull for company. He knew nothing of sex until Jahi taught him.72
The Jews borrowed many details from these Persian myths. Rabbinical tradition said Eve began to menstruate only after she had copulated with the serpent in Eden, and Adam was ignorant of sex until Eve taught him.73 It was widely believed that Eve’s firstborn son Cain was not begotten by Adam but by the serpent.74 Beliefs connecting serpents with pregnancy and menstruation appeared throughout Europe for many centuries. Up to modern times, German peasants still held that women could be impregnated by snakes.75
Whether initiated by a serpent or not, menstrual bleeding inspired deadly fear among both Persians and Jewish patriarchs (Leviticus 15). Rachel successfully stole her father’s teraphim (household gods) by hiding them under a camel saddle and sitting on it, telling her father she was menstruating so he dared not approach her (Genesis 31). To this day, orthodox Jews refuse to shake hands with a woman because she might be menstruating. Jews also adopted a rule apparently laid down by Hesiod, that a man must never wash in the same water previously used by a woman, lest it might contain a trace of menstrual blood.76There were many similar taboos. The ancient world’s most dreaded poison was the “moon-dew” collected by Thessalian witches, said to be a girl’s first menstrual blood shed during an eclipse of the moon.77 Pliny said a menstruous woman’s touch could blast the fruits of the field, sour wine, cloud mirrors, rust iron, and blunt the edges of knives.78 If a menstruous woman so much as laid a finger on a beehive, the bees would fly away and never return.79 If a man lay with a menstruous woman during an eclipse, he would soon fall sick and die.80
Christians inherited all the ancient patriarchs’ superstitious horrors. St. Jerome wrote: “Nothing is so unclean as a woman in her periods; what she touches she causes to become unclean.” Penitential regulations laid down in the 7th century by Theodore, Bishop of Canterbury, forbade menstruating women to take communion or even enter a church. At the French Synod of Meaux, menstruous women were specifically forbidden to come to church. From the 8th to the 11th centuries, many church laws denied menstruating women any access to church buildings. As late as 1684 it was still ordered that women in their “fluxes” must remain outside the church door.81 In 1298 the Synod of Würzburg commanded men not to approach a menstruating woman.82 The superstition came down to the 20th century, when a Scottish medical text quoted an old rhyme to the effect that menstrual blood could destroy the entire world:
Oh! Menstruating woman, thou’rt a fiendFrom which all nature should be closely screened.83
Christian women were commanded to despise the “uncleanness” of their own bodies, as in the Rule of Anchoresses: “Art thou not formed of foul slime? Art thou not always full of uncleanness?”84 Medical authorities of the 16th century were still repeating the old belief that “demons were produced from menstrual flux.”85 One of the “demons” born of menstrual blood was the legendary basilisk with its poisonous glance.86 The legend evidently arose from the classic myth of the Gorgon with her serpent-hair and wise blood, petrifying men with her glance. The Gorgon and the red cross of menstrual blood once marked the most potent taboos.87 The very word taboo, from Polynesian tupua, “sacred, magical,” applied specifically to menstrual blood.88"
"Victorian superstition taught that a child conceived during a menstrual period would be born with a caul, and would have occult powers.96 Nineteenth-century doctors inherited their predecessors’ notions of witchcraft and evil, and so maintained that menstruating women are not healthy; copulation with them could infect a man with urethritis or gonorrhea. Dr. Augustus Gardner said venereal diseases were usually communicated from women to men, not vice versa.97 Speaking of savages’ menstrual taboos, anthropologists described the women as “out of order,” “suffering from monthly illness,” or “stricken with the malady common to their sex.”98 A doctor wrote even in the present century: “We cannot too emphatically urge the importance of regarding these monthly returns as periods of ill health, as days when the ordinary occupations are to be suspended or modified.”99
At the present time just as in the Middle Ages, the Catholic church still considers itself on firm theological ground by advancing, as an argument against ordination of women, the notion that a menstruating priestess would “pollute” the altar. This would not preclude ordination of post-menopausal women, but different excuses are found for those. The holy “blood of life” used to be feminine and real; now it is masculine and symbolic."
http://members.efn.org/~finnpo/indigenia/Menstrual%20Blood%20-%20Walker.html
It is definitely not a contemporary, science based, biological, general knowledge, modern view that most people possess in this day and age in Western society.
The other thought I had was why is he even bringing that up on set? It is not very professional or wise to tell his boss he thinks she and other women are evil. I wonder what she did after he said that to her?
I think a lot of us in some point in our lives have been through that experience of being so astonished we are rendered speechless. Maybe some of us would observe quietly and not speak out so much. Some with age become more vocal. I've been through it. I felt like I just lost the patience to suffer through anything anymore and I just can't tolerate one iota. Where once I felt dominating people trying to take over and was just quietly taking it all in and not voicing my thoughts to others, whether I thought they did not deserve to have my attention, that certain people were looking for a reaction so I wasn't going to give it to them, I'm also not going to allow their negativity to be dumped all over me. I stand up for myself every situation that happens.
Never allow anyone to take credit for your hard work and effort or talent. I hope to think some karma comes to those that try to take credit for other's work where they can not replicate what you do and they will soon be discovered as the fakes they really are.
What journalist asked Ellen Kuras "How does it feel to have a man's job?"? I love her response. She comes across as a gentle, understanding, nurturing and a wise soul.
I still find to this day that people including other women mistake my kindness for weakness.
I do disagree with Tess Morris. I'm not interested in anyone getting a job just because they are a man or just because they are a woman. Every job should be earned based upon who is best qualified for it. The problem may lie more in the issue of why there aren't more women applying for the job? Certain jobs used to be or still are viewed as predominately male professions. Few women are interested in taking that path. It should be more about breaking down the traditional gender roles/professions and this needs to be done during childhood so that children grow up in a world where both sexes view the other as equal and that both can do any job they want to choose and there is no judgement either way. It also needs to be encouraged during high school when students start considering what careers might be best for them and encourage more young ladies towards those male dominated professions. At the end of the day our careers should be our own free choice and if more males naturally gravitate towards certain careers after all those efforts have been put in place and women naturally gravitate towards other careers then I don't feel we should be alarmed. I don't think women should be given jobs just to even out the numbers. I don't think that is fair on the men who miss out who are better for the job. The job should go to who is best for it whether they are male or female. If a female is not the best for the job she should not give up but continue to work her way there.
Creches are a good idea but when children reach the age where they need to be taken to and picked up from school, helped with homework, your time, attention and guidance that's when finding that work/family balance becomes more difficult.
Women are judged differently then men all the time although I do think it is also becoming harder for men as well now where once all men needed was a high position (power) and money, now they feel pressure to look good (manscape, look younger, work out, and even surgery). I feel like the pressures on looks are starting to become closer for both men and women and not always in a necessarily positive way. It is natural to think that if women want to be treated as equals to men that women would want to be like men. Many women trying to get ahead in a traditionally man's world may have gone through this and tried to act like men do. I actually think to do that is a mistake and it is good to be a woman and allow ourselves to celebrate our femininity and not try to stamp all traces of it out. It is fascinating to witness something more surprising where men are heading more towards traditionally women's roles/professions and getting in touch with their emotions, allowing themselves to be vulnerable and becoming more metrosexual. Women are judged and are supposed to be more homely, not go out, not drink, not smoke, not swear, not be rude, be polite and good mannered, stay home and look after the children. If a woman goes for a night out some men judge that she is not girlfriend/marriage or mother material. Women are judged for what they wear or don't wear, their jobs etc. There are absolute double standards. Many of the things men do or say if a woman does she is judged harshly in a negative way and often the man is praised or at the very least no one thinks twice or bats an eye lash about. These stereotypes are well outdated. There are plenty of real life women who are not traditionally lady like and there are certainly rude, horrible and whatever else women and those women should have a place as characters in the storytelling of movies.
Amanda Nevill is spot on with her views on the word sexism and the actual issues.
If Costume designer Sandy Powell was denied her final week's wages then I don't call that a personal issue. To be denied wages would make it a professional one. Wouldn't a union be jumping to her aid? Why wouldn't they help her? What are the real reasons why they wouldn't? Did they think they couldn't help her win her case because...? If it was a personal issue then she should still receive her final week's wages.
Likewise in regards to female characters there is still a way to go. The types of characters need to be more varied and therefore the actors who can play them. I think that progress will be exciting though. We can get excited about writing those characters and seeing them come to life on screen.
Above symbols image sourced from https://cdn.tutsplus.com/vector/uploads/2013/10/symbols-017.jpg
