Celebrating International Women's Day 2023 with BAFTA

08 Mar 2023

4 mins
Celebrating International Women's Day 2023 with BAFTA

This morning, we once again teamed up with BAFTA for an in-person panel around International Women's Day (8 March) and National Careers Week (6-11 March), spotlighting women working across the creative industries and highlighting the importance of equal representation within them.

Award-winning broadcaster, podcaster and television presenter, Clara Amfo, hosted the panel at Picturehouse Finsbury Park. The panelists included BAFTA nominated Writer and Director, Sally El Hosaini (The Swimmers, My Brother the Devil); BAFTA Breakthrough Cinematographer, Diana Olifirova (Heartstopper, We Are Lady Parts); and Casting Director, Verity Naughton (Stephen, Enola Holmes, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snake).

Female representation through lots of screen industry jobs has always been not as prominent as male representation. It's starting to change - perhaps not as much as it should - but if we highlight this to the younger generations (I'm with a primary school) then that change is going to happen more swiftly. It's important they see that women are powerful and women deserve to be in all these jobs.

Rose Leach, Middle School Leader, Ark Globe Academy Primary School
Host Clara Amfo
Panel host, Clara Amfo
BAFTA Panel - IWD 2023
Left to right: Diana Olifirova, Sally El Hosaini, Verity Naughton

One major discussion point was the gender disparities that still exist across the screen industries. Notably, Cinematographer, Diana Olifirova, brought attention to the gender inequity in her craft citing that cinematographers have the second worst female representation in the film industry after composers.

According to the BFI filmography project, female crew members made up only about 30% of the production side of the UK film industry over the past ten years (2011-2022), while male crew members made up approximately 70%. Specifically across the sound and photography departments, women only make up around 8% of directors of photography and 5% of sound leads. Female Directors make up 16% of the UK industry and female Casting Directors are far more significantly represented with 75%.

We've partnered with BAFTA for a variety of additional online events throughout National Careers Week, shining a light on the vast range of screen industry careers available for young people. Meanwhile, the 2022 International Women's Day Panel with BAFTA featured actor and Into Film Ambassador Lashana Lynch, director Lyttanya Shannon and Editor Siân Fever, and our careers highlights from the event are just as relevant this year.

Visit our Careers in the Film & Screen Industries page to explore all of our careers-focused resources and in-depth articles. You'll also find videos of industry professionals talking about their specific roles and giving direct advice to young people, as well as a variety of careers-centred teacher training opportunities.

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