For the eighty-sixth time in their ninety-one-year history, the Academy Awards failed to nominate a single female director in 2019. This most recent awards snub is part of a bigger problem in the film industry. Women are dramatically underrepresented as directors, accounting for 10.6 percent of directors in 2019, according to the Inclusion Initiative. While that’s an increase of 7.9 percent from what it was in 2007, it’s still a disappointing ratio of 20:1 male to female directors over the past thirteen years. When we look at the ratio of white male to female POC directors, it jumps to a shocking 92:1. 
Things are only slightly better in film production, where women are listed as producers on just 18 percent of the top 300 movies from 2015 to 2018. (Only 1.6 percent of those were women of color.)
Connected to womens’ underrepresentation is the horrifying, ongoing abuse and harassment they’ve suffered at the hands of their male colleagues. More than a hundred years ago, the safe haven and social club Hollywood Studio Club opened to protect women working in film from rampant sexual abuse by their male colleagues. How far have we really come from those days? The revelations of Harvey Weinstein’s victims and the #MeToo movement show that sexual harassment is still a major industry issue.
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