Gender Still Matters: Towards Sustainable Progress for Women in Australian Film and Television Industries

Abstract

In the Australian film, television and audio-visual industries, as in other Western countries, women have not achieved equality to participate and express themselves as key creatives or in key decision-making positions. This matters not just because equity and social inclusion are essential for ethical civil society but because the implications of a lack of diversity are that the industry potentially misses out on innovation by only including half the population (thus providing a business case for inclusion). It also matters because of the broader range of experiences and perspectives women offer to society and culture. As a response to this problem, in 2015, the federal government agency Screen Australia established the Gender Matters Taskforce, a five-million-dollar strategy to address gender imbalance in the Australian screen industry. This policy intervention had a focus on project development and career progress for women.

In 2018, the Taskforce entered its second phase. This chapter will contextualise the rationale for the Gender Matters policy with an historical overview in relation to the issue of gender equality in the Australian film and television industries. It will examine the strategies and the impact of the initiative on the working conditions of women, the challenges, opportunities and future directions to achieve the key issue of sustainable progress for women in Australian audio-visual industries. It will explore the implications of this policy on the practice of female (and male) screen professionals. It will consider the effects of the initiative upon screen culture, which is taken to be all of the activities within a screen community (consumption, reception, analysis, discussion), in order to understand the impact of the initiative as informing the vitality of the culture from which it emerges. It concludes by providing a view on the significance of gender diversity for the construction of a distinctive content creation industry.