The Deputy Dean of RMIT University’s School of Media and Communication Lisa French has backed demands by Australian screen legend Geoffrey Rush and industry heavyweights for females to be supported behind the scenes in Australian film. An Associate Professor of Cinema Studies, Media and Communication, French undertook a research project on “Women in the Victorian Film, Television and Related Industries’’ in 2012 which found significantly fewer females working behind scenes compared to men.
“There are some areas where women are doing better and their numbers are increasing in television but in areas like feature films, they remain under represented compared to males and actually appear to be going backwards terms of the numbers working.” Associate Professor French commented “Latest data shows that women directing feature films according to Screen Australia figures in 2013 were only 16 per cent, in 1992, they were 22 per cent.”
Associate Professor French explained that some female actors had taken the imbalance of women in the workforce in to their own hands, French went on to point out that It was recently announced that Meryl Streep is funding a Lab for women writers aged over 40 to encourage more roles for older women and to nurture women writers.