Women in View on Screen

Women in View offers insight on employment of women in feature-length films and live action television series in Canada. This report is a purely statistical study based on databases of government agencies and artist’s guilds.

The study is intended as a non-exhaustive snapshot of the presence of women in the following content determining positions: director, screenwriter, and cinematographer. It also includes web-series and actors as data points. Hence, it offers a glimpse of the presence of women in key creative positions in the specific categories of production identified.

It reveals that women remain significantly under-represented in key creative roles in Canadian films, television and web series production. Some findings include:

• Women are underrepresented in senior creative roles in film, television and now web series production.
• Women were more equitably represented in films whose level of investment – and by implication, overall budget size – was lower.  Conversely, the higher the investment level, the fewer women were employed.
• In spite of significant differences of scale, structure, and budget between legacy and web series, similar employment patterns prevail. Of 45 directors engaged in these series, 39 (87%) were men and 6 (13%) were women.