Multimedia news story

Oscar nominated actress Saoirse Ronan spoke out against the portrayal of women as stereotyped characters in major film productions at the BFI screen talk last October.

The 21-year-old actress, nominated for the first time at the Academy Awards when she was only 13, talked about the practice of film industry that attributes to women mainly co-lead characters, after she experienced it herself in her carer.

Figure 1 Saoirse Ronan at the BFI screen talk last October.

‘I get scripts coming to me for roles where they say, “She’s the heart of the film”, and she’s actually the girlfriend of the lead or the receptionist or whatever,’ said Ronan.

Films have portrayed the 90% of female characters as nurses and secretaries between 1995 and 2015, according to research by FirtyThirtyEight, the polling aggregation website by analyst Nate Silver.

Ronan stated: ‘I’m tired of producers and directors who want me in their film because they think that I’m perfect for their role. Usually, in the script the role is described for the male lead character as “just his type” and that’s all they say about her.”

‘They don’t talk about who she is or what she does or anything like that. She’s literally described as this object that’s in relation to him,’ added the actress.

‘Moreover the 90% of the directors and producers I’ve been working with have been male and they’ve been incredible. But, I think that it would be really nice to work with more women in the future,’ continued the Oscar nominated.

Women only accounted for the 27% of Behind-the-Scenes jobs such as directors, writers, executive producers, producers, editors, and cinematographers, according to research by Women in film and television UK in 2015.

Ronan encouraged the young generation to say “no” to sexism in film industry because female words and visions count and matter.

Kate Kinninmont, chief executive of Women in film and television UK, said at the WTF annual meeting last week: ‘I don’t believe that only 7% of women are capable of making a film compared to 93% of men.’

‘I want to see a time when women are regarded exactly the same as men. When there are not shameful statistics about our underrepresentation in Behind-the-scenes roles in film and television industry,’ continued Kinninmont.

Sexist underrepresentation and misrepresentation of women in film industry affect the development of feminist global policies, according to research by Margot Wallstrom, the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, released at the LSE conference last November.

Figure 2 Margot Wallstrom at the LSE conference “Towards a Feminist Foreign Policy.”

Wallstrom stated: ‘In order to get an efficient feminist foreign policy, the West should start changing its macho culture focusing on details of society representation, like the film portrayal of women.’

In the last years Swedish cinemas have submitted major films to the Bechdel test film rating that estimates the active presence of women on screen in bid to promote gender equality.

Last year Holly Tarquini, director of the Bath Film Festival, devised the F rating film classification given to any film that promotes gender equality in the UK.

Academy Award winner Geena Davis founded the Institute on Gender in Media in 2004 to promote gender balance and reduce female characters’ stereotypes in entertainment.

Media Outlet:

I’m going to pitch the story to the online websites “Indiewire” and “The Guardian”. The first is the leading news, information, and networking site for the film industry, while the second one has online space for culture/film news articles about sexism. I think that both websites would be interested for the themes that I’ve decided to deal with because they could have a wide impact on readers.