Report shows Creative England as the most supportive of female-written feature films

A new report by Alexis Kreager and Stephen Follows into gender inequality and screenwriters has found that women accounted for just 16% of screenwriters of UK feature films between 2005 and 2016.

The  Gender Inequality and Screenwriters report studied 12 years of filmmaking in the UK and found that between 2005-2016 four out of every five UK movies were written mainly by male writers. If they broadened the criteria out to UK feature films with at least one female writer, the figure remained worryingly low. Less than a quarter of films made over the 12-year period had at least one female writer.

Creative England was highlighted as one of the UK public funders which has been most supportive of female-written feature films.

This follows the Directors UK commissioned study, “Cut Out Of The Picture – A study into Gender Inequality Amongst Directors within the UK Film Industry”, in 2016, which highlighted Creative England’s positive contribution to the sector with the following findings:

• 49.7% of funding awards via Creative England (Jan 2011 to October 2015) went to female applicants.
• Women applying to Creative England have a much higher success rate (16.6%) than men applying (10.1%).

Following the report, Creative England supported the introduction of 50-50 gender parity for all public film funding by 2020, as called for by DirectorsUK.

To read the full report click here, to read the summary by Stephen Fellows click here.