FERA partners in online joint event “Women in European cinema: are we making progress?”

8 December 2022

On December 7, FERA partnered in the joint event “Women in European Cinema: Are We Making Progress?” organized together with the European Women’s Audiovisual Network (EWA Network), UNI Europa – Media, Entertainment & Arts (EUROMEI), and the European Film Agency Directors Association (EFAD) in partnership with the International Federation of Actors (FIA), the Lab Femmes de Cinema, the European Audiovisual Observatory,) and Cineuropa.

For the third consecutive year, the online event was organised to keep track of the evolution of women’s presence in European cinema. Participants also explored the concepts of equal remuneration and opportunities and brainstormed on possible actions to address the gender pay gap issue in the European audiovisual sector.

The event was introduced and moderated by Dearbhal Murphy from the International Federation of Actors, and kicked off with the most recent quantitative and qualitative studies on the presence of women in European audiovisual productions by Patrizia Simone (European Audiovisual Observatory) who highlighted that women represent only 25% of all European feature directors.

Lise Perottet presented the 2022 update of the Lab Femmes de Cinéma qualitative study analysing parity policies in the European audiovisual sector implemented across 36 countries, underlining that gender equality and diversity issues are increasingly addressed politically.

In her comments, FERA CEO Pauline Durand-Vialle noted that tackling freelance female directors’ unequal professional opportunities required for socio-economic issues to be addressed – equal pay, work-life balance, churn effect after higher education of debut films – yet this remains a challenge for national authorities, employers, public funders and European Institutions. She also stressed that the survival of a strong independent production sector was essential to allow artistic freedom and personal storytelling to still exist across Europe over time for all audiovisual authors.

The event wrapped up with participants stressing that although awareness on the importance of the gender pay gap issue has grown at European and national level, a lot still needs to be done to achieve equality for women in the European audiovisual sector.

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