Friday, December 02, 2016
Women in Animation Aim to Boost Female Creative Talent in the Biz
Variety: Animation is often seen as a part of the industry friendly to families and women because the longer production cycles for each feature – typically three to five years – mean more steady employment and opportunity to attend to life’s demands outside of filmmaking. But women still have a long way to go before they’re equally represented in animated features and television shows.
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I find the statistic that women in some animation programs make up over 70% of them - I am glad these schools are including women in high numbers, but with the prevalence of men in the industry it is very difficult for women to break in.
Women often are marginalized in tech fields due to old prejudice and to the lack of women in leadership. I enjoy the comments about women bringing up other women through mentorship, as women who have successfully broken in can be the link to bringing more women into the field. Often times, there is an expectation women will compete against each other in order to be the 'chosen' women, and that is often shown in the media. But if women do not view other women as competition, but as allies, maybe some more strides will be made.
It is amazing to see how far women have come in the animation departments. To think that at the start Women were only allowed in these offices to help motivate the men is astounding. The woman’s job when she would enter the workplace in an animator’s office was not to come up with ideas and contribute to storylines. Women didn’t even draw their own portrayals of each scene. A man would draw the framing illustrations of each set and the woman would take those framing illustrations and would copy them almost exactly onto another page. While only moving an arm a fraction of a centimeter down or move the background ever so slightly. It absolutely warms my heart to know that now there are women leading those creative discussions. Women are physically leading animation groups and companies. Not only hand drawn animation but also in digital animation as well.
Animation, as one of my friend's parents put it, the most sane and rational of the performing arts (if it even counts as one?) Reading this article, I am reminded of the long hours and hectic production schedules of theater, to which I will someday hopefully become fully accustomed. All of those comparisons aside, however, this article makes some very solid points about women in entertainment workplaces.
Women are hugely underrepresented in animation, as statistics show.Steps are being taken, and that number of women is slowly but steadily growing. That being said, there's still a very long way to go, and not all women in the industry are comfortable waiting as long as may be necessary at the current rate for change. Thus, organizations like Women in Animation (WiA) are pushing hard for a 50-50 split in hiring and staffing on animated films by 2025. While this may seem like a herculean task, theses women are very determined, and have already pushed so hard to change college statistics. This article gives me hope for the future of animation, and even the future of entertainment.
Let's go, ladies!
There are a few things I really like about this initiative. First of all, I like the hard goal of a 50/50 split by 2025. That's a firm number that people can be motivated by and know when they've been successful. I think it is optimistic, since we're currently looking at 23% women, but I appreciate the optimism. Second, and perhaps more importantly, I love that the initiative focuses on education for women in negotiation. As a woman, I don't want to be pushed or encouraged into anything simply because the company knows it needs more of me, I want to go out and get it myself. I want to work for it. Giving women the tools they need to succeed is a much more important task than simply badgering the men on a production to look at how many of each gender they are hiring (though it should certainly be coming up when making hiring decisions...) I was sad to read that women are being encouraged to work in production rather than more creative roles while still in school. That's extremely disappointing to me as a woman in college, to imagine that someone might try to quell my passion because I belong in another part of the field. Kudos to the women working to change this.
I think that the discrepancy between the number of women animators and female animation students is terrible. Women should be able to have their voice be heard and create their own stories in any profession. It will definitely be difficult to challenge the stereotypes against women that have all too long pervaded our culture. The historically male-dominated fields, such as animation, as well as society in general, will have to have a fundamental change in how it views leadership and the people in leadership positions. This is the only way real change will happen. The fact that the animation team of ‘Roadside Assistance’ has 50/50 male/female ratio brings testament to its female animation director, Kathy McNeal. Having a more diverse leadership will allow for more diverse hirings and animation teams. I think that it is amazing how there are organizations addressing this issue. Hopefully, their god work will continue and make a difference!
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