This year at the Oscars, three Irish women were nominated for their incredible work and contribution to cinema. Actress Saoirse Ronan was nominated for her beautiful performance in Brooklyn, marking her second Oscar nomination at the tender age of 23. Ruth Negga was also honoured for her acting performance in Loving; bringing wildly overdue acclaim to this versatile actress, who has been impressing film and television audiences for the past decade. Finally, Emmy-award winning costume designer Consolata Boyle received an Oscar nomination for her work on the Meryl Streep dramedy Florence Foster Jenkins – like Ronan, her second Oscar nomination, as Boyle’s beautiful work was also nominated in 2007 for her contribution to The Queen.
It’s clear that internationally, Irish women are blazing trails and being justly rewarded when it comes to their contributions to film and cinema – so why are they still fighting so hard to have that work recognised at home?
This was the question posed by last month’s New Horizons: Women in the Irish Film & Television Industries event. Held at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, it brought together broadcasters, writers and film industry professionals from both Ireland and abroad, to discuss how best to develop the role of women in Irish TV and film – particularly behind the camera.
Organiser Dr. Susan Liddy explained the need for both the event, and a rapid intervention in the Irish film and television industry, stating that “over time women have downsized their ambition and see the Irish film industry as being a boys’ club. The aim is to show that facilitating women to tell their stories is a positive thing for the Irish film industry.”
Dr. Liddy has spent years researching this issue, and was a key player in initiating and launching the Irish Film Board’s (IFB) 2015 Six Point Plan regarding gender parity in Irish film. The Six Point Plan highlighted the key areas that need to be addressed to redress the gender imbalance within the film industry: information, funding, training and mentorship, education, enterprise and partnership.
But despite the positive response to the IFB’s plan, it’s unclear how much this issue has changed over the past 18 months. Even looking at this year’s Irish Film and Television Awards, out of the 19 nominations for writing and directing Irish films (both shorts and feature-length), only 4 woman were nominated, indicating that there is still a huge difference in the number of women entering and being celebrated in the industry.
These numbers support Dr. Liddy’s research into the gender inequality around script development and production funding in Ireland, which found that just 13 per cent of Irish films made between 1993 and 2013 were written by women.
Liddy, along with former chair of the Irish Film Board Annie Doona, have been outspoken about the systematic failure of both film education and the industry in Ireland, which implicitly and explicitly dissuades women from entering and succeeding within the business.
Melissa Silverstein, the founder of the website Women And Hollywood, was a speaker at the New Horizons event, and also spoke out about this insidious form of sexism. It not only undervalues stories about women, but discourages women from applying for positions as writers, producers and directors because of how leadership roles remain gendered.
“If a woman’s not applying for a grant it’s because she’s been socialised that way,” said Silverstein. “This is not about women, it’s about the system.”
Internationally, women in Hollywood have already proven that Silverstein is right; this is not just an issue affecting Ireland. Indeed, over the past few years, A-list actresses and female directors such as Ava DuVernay, Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon, Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence have all headed up initiatives and even set up their own production companies because they were seeing a dearth of roles and recognition being given to women in the film industry.
It seems that while initiatives by the IFB play an important role in highlighting and redressing some of the gender inequality in the Irish film industry, society at large will have to take a similarly self-ware and proactive approach to casual and systematic sexism for the film industry to undergo the transformation it needs.