Women in film

Women in film encompasses women’s participation in cinema as filmmakers, performers, workers, and subjects, as well as how films represent women and gender.

Bechdel test: A test asking whether a work features two named women who talk to each other about something other than a man. Its simple criteria made gender imbalance in fictional dialogue visible, while also exposing the limits of counting representation.
Gender representation in film: The portrayal and visibility of gender identities and roles in cinematic stories and images. It isolates the on-screen dimension from women’s employment and participation across the industry.
Alice Guy-Blaché: A French filmmaker who directed fiction films from the 1890s and became an early studio owner in the United States. Her career challenges histories that place women’s filmmaking only in later periods.
Male gaze: A concept describing visual media organized around a presumed heterosexual masculine point of view. It is a key framework against which feminist accounts of cinematic perspective are developed.
Women’s film: A film genre and cycle centered on women’s experiences, often addressing romance, family, and social constraints. These films place women’s lives at the center, though genre conventions can both challenge and reinforce stereotypes.
Gender pay gap in film: Differences in compensation between women and men working in the film industry. Pay disparities reveal how professional opportunity persists beyond access to jobs.
Lois Weber: An American silent-film director, screenwriter, and producer known for socially engaged films. Her prominence in early Hollywood shows that women once held major creative authority in studio production.
Auteur theory: A theory that treats a film director’s recurring choices as a coherent personal authorship. Its focus on directors raises questions about how women’s authorship is recognized and canonized.
Female gaze: A way of framing and narrating that represents women as subjects rather than reducing them to objects of vision. It offers a framework for examining how women’s authorship can alter cinematic perspective.
Casting: The process of selecting performers for roles in a film or other production. Casting decisions determine which women appear onscreen and which roles become available to them.

Linked from 32 pages