Female Audiovisual Professionals in European TV Fiction Production

This report provides an assessment of the gender imbalance within six audiovisual professional categories in European TV fiction. It shows remarkable differences in the audiovisual professional activity depending on the job:

  • Women directors collaborated with other directors more often than their male counterparts, and quite often in gender-balanced teams.
  • Writers of European TV fiction worked in large groups which were either male-driven or gender balanced.
  • For lead roles, data limits made the analysis more delicate (This category analysis builds on IMDB information which provides generally the names for 4 actors, although sometimes even more than 4 names are given. A sample test by the Observatory seems to prove that these 4 names correspond to the first four lead roles). The results were not clear enough to understand who is playing the principal roles. It was clearly an activity performed in groups and teams appeared quite gender balanced.
  • Producers worked mainly alone or when teaming up, it was in gender-balanced teams.
  • In European TV fiction, cinematographers were mainly men and they work either alone or with other men.
  • For composers too, data showed mainly men and working alone; but there were more women hidden in male-driven teams than the opposite.
Year Country Organisation Author Type
2021 Europe European Audiovisual Observatory report
Theory of Change Keywords Download/link
Intermediate Outcome 3 gender inequality, television, video Download/link