Gender Parity and the Representation of Indigenous and non-Indigenous women in Australian TV & F
- Bethany Tracey
- Oct 29, 2017
- 2 min read
Screen Australia has announced major progress in their aim to reach gender parity through their ‘Gender Matters’ initiative, however women within the Australian film and television industry, say it’s not enough.
According to a media release on 6 August 2017, Screen Australia COO Fiona Cameron announced that: “47 % of successful production funding applications had female-led creative teams across a two year average (2015/16 - 20166/17 inclusive)”.
Established in December 2015, ‘Gender Matters’ is a $5 million initiative that aims to have “50% of successful production funding applications to be female-led projects by the end of 2018/19” said Screen Australia.
Whilst this progress is only 3% shy of their initial objective, Fiona Cameron said:
“the results are uneven, with the television and online sectors continuing to do the heavy lifting”.
Australian writer, director and producer, Julie Kalceff, agrees with Cameron’s claim. Kalceff is in fact a successful recipient of Gender Matters: Brilliant Stories funding for her series ‘Torn’. However, she claims that gender parity and representation in mainstream broadcasting “has a long way to go”said Kalceff.
So much so, that Kalceff made her previous project, the 5 season drama series “Starting from Now” specifically for the online space. Kalceff said: “more people are going to the online space to find different ... more interesting content and more stories about women”.
According to Kalceff , the Gender Matters initiative provided her project ‘Torn’ not only financial stability, but also credibility with production companies and producers.
However, despite the advances in the 'Gender Matters' initiative, Kalceff believes gender parity and equality of representation is still an industry wide issue.
She said: “This means Screen Australia must not only run this initiative but also work with the different guilds, the different state funding bodies, so that we attack the issue from a number of different angles”.
Source List:
Written:
Screen Australia
Julie Kalceff
Audio:
Tanya Orman NITV Channel Manager
Music sourced from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP9mNTj0AU0 - all credit to the
Aboriginal Cultural Festival and Festival Coordinator Karla Hart
Grabs featured in Audio piece: NITV News video ‘ Logie winner Miranda Tapsell pleads for more beautiful people of colour on TV’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F4YKBEX8ec
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