IWD2020: Creative Women Profile

Abstract

An article on the Creative Lancashire website about my work including the recent documentary I made for a Sky Channel called British Animation Breaking The Mold. The women interviewed in the documentary were from a range of backgrounds – animators, directors, commissioners and writers. These women all stated that there are less women in the animation industry in key creative role, yet UK Screen Alliance, Animation UK and Access VX recently published a rather surprising report, and these figures don’t reflect the stories being told by women in the documentary. The survey revealed that 51% of workers are women – 89% in production, 55% in senior creative production and 49% in creative artist roles. At first impression these figures seem very exciting, and it would appear the women I interviewed are in a minority but on further examination, the categories seem rather vague. What does ‘senior creative production’ or ‘creative artist roles’ actually mean? Why was their no mention of ‘Director’ or ‘Animator’ or ‘show creator’? The categories are broad and could include a number of roles that are traditionally dominated by women – production and art working e.g paint and trace, and craft – making models and puppets. All the women included in the documentary state that women dominate production and artwork areas of the pipeline and are in the minority in areas such as directing, creating series or storyboarding. Have these vague categories skewed the figures to ensure that the animation industry appears to be more inclusive? If so why? Having spent over a year interviewing various women across the industry, it seems odd that not one women said that they were in the majority in this industry, particularly with roles such as directors or show creators. If you look at the shows created over the past 20 years, only 6.5% are created by women