♪ martha: i was told when i started that i couldn't be a director because i was a woman. and i have been directing now for many years, but certainly not as frequently as i would have had i been a man. maria: i was going into meetings on projects with people as a feature director who had worked with academy award nominated actors. so i should have been taken seriously in these meetings. but i wasn't. it was always a sense of, can you really do this? that a man could do it better. lexi: people would say things to me like, your movie would have

gotten a bigger distribution deal had you been a man. catherine: a lot of people have crazy prejudice that we can't direct action movies, even though we might have grown up doing sports our whole lives and taken all kinds of boxing and fight classes. lexi: you can't actually look at a man and say, he probably doesn't know how to cook and you can't look at a woman and say, she probably knows nothing about sports. we're not in the 19th century. rachel: not every woman director is capable of directing every movie. not every man director is capable of directing every movie. we all have a different skill set to bring to the job. but the job is completely gender-neutral. victoria: you ask any man who has a wonderful career who loves what they are doing, what would happen if somebody told you, you can't do that because you have the wrong genitals? i mean, it is absurd. ♪

victoria: we knew that there was something wrong, but we did not know it was that bad. but it was that bad. and so the next question was, what are we going to do about this? lexi: by the time you get into the dga, you have long been a director. you know, you are not just coming off of the street. they are not recruiting new talent from out of nowhere. ♪

rachel: sadly, part of the issue for women is we are lumped into a category of diversity and so the numbers dwindle because half, or even more of those jobs go to men of diversity instead of just women. maria: in the dga studio diversity agreements, ethnic minority men and women of all ethnicities are clumped together in one category. so when show runners or studio execs feel that, in order to comply with dga studio diversity agreements, they have to hire an ethnic minority man or a woman, invariably they hire a man, an ethnic minority man. ♪ maria: so i proposed that we create a double-mandate system, that instead of having one

diversity program, we would have two separate diversity programs. one of the diversity programs would include women of all ethnicities, and the other group would include ethnic minority people of both genders. in this way, women of color the studios, show runners, and executives would have to hire women. they wouldn't be able to just pull ethnic minority men out of the diversity pool. they would have to hire women and they would also have to hire ethnic minority people. ♪ maria: i didn't write it as if we want to make a law. i just said, we want this concept to be discussed more in depth, and even that didn't pass.

one of the most powerful -- victoria: this was the spring of 1979, which was the pleistocene age when dinosaurs were still roaming in hollywood. and i mean that literally and metaphorically at the same time. i was invited to a meeting, a large meeting with a lot of women. we said, are you working? are you working? are you working? and everyone said no. ♪ victoria: we all met every saturday morning in my dining room with all this data on the table. some of the piles were this big. and it took a year for us to finally come to the number of how many women were working and

how many women weren't working. the number that became clear was that, of all the assignments in both television and motion pictures, one half of 1% of all of those jobs were going to women. it did come up, well, what's going to happen? you know, we can -- maybe we will never work again. and so then we realized, what do we have to lose? we are not working now. ♪ victoria: between 1979 or 1980 and 1995, the statistics jumped from one half of 1% to 16% in television. they never -- they never went that high in film. they only went up to 3% or 5%.

in fact, that is where they are right now. now, if those statistics kept going up at that rate, by now, we should be having about between 30% and 35% of all television jobs should be given to women, but that is not happening. in fact, the statistics plateaued out after 1995 and started to go backwards. which means that things have not improved in the past 20 years. how is that possible? lexi: i've actually had executives say things to me like, "oh, we are never hiring her again. she cannot make a decision if her life depended on it." martha: they said that you have to learn to play golf. you have to schmooze with us in the bar and talk about sports. geena: our motto is, if they see it, they can be it. because you have to see it. ♪

♪ martha: when movies didn't make money, they said, "well, we tried a woman, and that didn't work out." imagine if they tried that with one guy? "we tried a guy. that didn't work." so now we are going to what, aliens? the women are not making as much money, so they are the first people dropped off of the agent's slate. so if you don't have an agent, you don't have a job. lexi: clearly if people still think we cannot make money, you know, we have to talk about things like, you know, how much money "50 shades" did. how much money "frozen" did. and catherine hardwicke turned the young adult genre into a lucrative genre. catherine: i'm catherine hardwicke, and i directed "twilight." nobody knew it would be as big as it would be, because we were told why a book for girls like "sisterhood of the traveling pants," that is going to max out

at, like, $28 million. that is all this movie will ever make. there is not a big enough audience for it. so they kept cutting the action sequences down. cut it down, cut it down, cut the visual effects down. so we could make it for the budget they wanted to make. and then of course opening weekend, we made, you know, $400 million. after "twilight," people were excited about "divergent," people were excited about "hunger games." in fact, even people were inspired to write those books probably with the success of "twilight." so i think it has shown that there is a desire, and there is an audience. that if you can see a brave, you know, badass girl out there, that people will go see the movie. it's disappointing that even though, you know, a female director directed the first "twilight," did the whole cast, the whole works -- not one of the other "twilights" or "the hunger games" or "divergent" -- all books written by women, starring a woman, not one of them has been directed by women.

martha: we are having a huge argument right now if women can direct these big pictures. of course they can. >> hold on. lexi: in the world of big, big budgets, marvel and d.c. movies, there has not really been a woman. so there's this pressure of that one woman who is going to all guide us there. ♪ lexi: i made the movie "punisher: war zone." directors have to have a vision, and they have to stick with that. you cannot be wishy-washy about things. you have to be decisive. i actually have had executives say things to me like, "oh, we are never hiring her again -- she can't make a decision if her life depended on it." so that gave me a message of if you are soft-spoken and you try to get along with everybody, that's not what they want in a director. yet at the same time, i remember

precisely a development executive saying to me we really want the punisher in a muscled-out car flying into a house and me saying, absolutely not. that was me being difficult. and this is another one of those codewords, where, like, ok, how exactly would you like me to be? decisive and stick to my vision and be strong about what i want and yet not upset anybody? please give me the secret to that. it's a fail/fail situation. martha: i have been the first woman to direct on tv shows. and i found there were people who really couldn't look at a woman in the eye and take orders from a woman. now there is other ways of being a director, because let's face it, there are all kinds, shapes, and sizes of male directors. ♪ geena: i ended up now sponsoring the largest amount of research ever done on gender in media covering over a 20-year span, and the results are appalling.

for every one female character, there are three male characters. we found that if there is a female director or writer, the percentage of female characters on screen goes up 10%. so it has an impact on what we see on screen. the reason i have focused on what happens in front of the camera is because i feel that we are training people from the very beginning, from when they are a little toddler, to see women as less important and less competent. we are not seeing women in leadership positions, so therefore, we are not seeing it in real life. one interesting example is that we studied the occupations of all female characters in film and tv. and on tv, there are so many female forensic scientists -- >> how'd you find the wheels? geena: because of "csi" and those shows -- that colleges are scrambling to keep up with the

number of women who want to study forensic science because they have seen it, right? and they say, "hey, that looks great. i could do that." well, we are not seeing women directing films. we are also not seeing female directors on screen. and that is why our motto is, "if they see it, they can be it," because you have to see it. ♪ martha: i was president of the directors guild and the only, so far, female president of the directors guild in its many years of being in existence. so what happened is, i got tapped by the former president. he said, "you know you are going to be the president one day." so i said, "well, you know, i should run now." then they said, "oh, you know, so-and-so is older than you. we should let him be president first. so why don't you step aside. we will let him be president first." and then, four years later, "oh,

so-and-so should run, and you should step aside." i mean, they told me things like, "you're too young to be president." and then i said, "how old were you when you were president?" and they were younger than i was at the time that they said that. they said, well, you have to learn to play golf, you have to schmooze with us in the bar, and talk about sports, and, you know, and all this stuff. i found out later that these are the kinds of things that in corporations, they tell women. i mean, i really wondered about this. ♪ rachel: i can vouch for the fact that there are over 1200 trained women directors -- professional, experienced women directors, directors guild members -- who are not working. and every year that goes by that they are not working, their careers are dinged by the fact that they are not working. ♪ maria: when you dig into the pool of women directors, it's a very shallow pool.

most of the women in that pool are movie stars or the daughters of movie moguls or producers or something. you are for the most part not going for women who have been through film school and made award-winning films and so forth. those women get forgotten. their names don't appear on any list that producers can see. they don't have any way of knowing who those women are or how they can access them. and the directors guild does this terrible thing of maintaining this diversity list. you have to have directed within the last 18 months to be on this list. so when a production company, a producer, or a show runner wants to hire a woman director of any ethnicity, they call the dga and they get this list, and they get the same list over and over again. there are about 27 women who are directing over and over and over again. so if the producers call the agents for those women, and they find they are all booked up, which they are because they are getting all the work, then they

move on to men because there is no other list to pull from. and those are lucrative, glamorous, good jobs. the dga diversity task force is a very important organization within the guild. now the diversity task force is made up of dga directors, and they are there to oversee compliance of the dga studio diversity agreement. and they are also actively seeking open assignments on tv shows at those same studios. you can imagine what an incredible conflict of interest this is. it's like having a police force that you are asking to go and police a corporation where they are also employed. ♪

catherine: as soon as i made "twilight," i would have thought it would be a lot easier. but in fact it was just as difficult. and my next movie, i got paid less. lexi: why has not one studio come forward and said that, not one network, not one production company has come forward and said, we cannot hear it anymore. these stats are horrible. we will put in a volunteer quota. ♪

♪ catherine: as soon as i made "twilight," i would have thought it would be a lot easier because i could prove that i made $400 million for a studio on a $37 million budget, and it spawned a huge franchise and all the other franchises similar to it. but it was not easy for me after that. in fact, it was just as difficult. and my next movie, i got paid less. rachel: i am in a situation

right now where i have written a screenplay that a significant producer wants to produce and a significant actor wants to star in. women who are known as the foremost feminists in hollywood as producers, and their belief system is that they cannot get a movie made with a woman director attached. that's their belief system. i have spent every single day of these last two and a half years solely full-time dedicated to this project. this is the movie that i was put on the planet to direct. what do i do? what do i do? do i say -- do i allow my moral outrage to bubble up and say, how dare you? or do i say this has been a 30-year struggle, and do i take

advantage of this opportunity to maybe have a really high-profile movie made that i would have written and that i would produce, but i won't direct? someone else will direct. martha: it is so outrageous now to hear this stuff still going on. to hear that people still say we won't want a woman. we can't hire a woman. a woman couldn't do this. i am still hearing it. and i was president of the dga. lexi: it doesn't matter what you do, because i happened to be one of those directors. i did all the steps. i did the guyish movies, i did the movie that wasn't a chick flick, and i was nominated for an oscar, and i had the follow-up feature that won awards. you work hard, you achieve good things, you pay your dues, and you go up, but when you keep hitting walls where you shouldn't be hitting walls, it all makes no sense to you anymore. right away, guys, let's go again. in the process of this, i've lost myself.

and i am just like right now trying to find it again. like, who am i? who was i when i got here at 20? if i could go back, i would never go into the film business. i would have done many, many other things. you know, this is actually going to make me cry, because -- you know. don't -- don't film that. it's heartbreaking. if i could meet another 20-year-old, i would say, run. turn around, go into to any other industry. ♪ maria: there are a group of us who are basically putting our names out there, risking the possibility of getting blacklisted and never working again because we want to change things for the next generation. because i want to change things for my nine-year-old daughter and her friends. because -- because i don't want to see this happen again to anybody. victoria: there has been silence for the last 20 years. there's not silence anymore.

it's amazing. anyone who makes noise, they do and they have 13% of the jobs to lose. and that's brave. to go up and say i'm sorry, i'm not just interested in myself, i'm interested in the other women standing on either side of me. martha: some men and women feel it isn't going to change, because some people feel it is almost biological. which if you were out there scrambling in the dirt and trying to kill a squirrel to eat it, it would make a difference who could run faster or throw a spear farther. that would all make a difference. we don't live in that world anymore. and we have evened the playing field. so the question is -- do we have enough inner virtue to do the right thing? or does this have to be a war where 51% of the population battles to get equal status? lexi: why has not one studio come forward and said that, not one network, not one production company has come forward and

said, "we cannot hear it anymore. these stats are horrible. we will put in a volunteer quota." they are waiting until the government does it. and trust me, we are pushing for that. it's not like we are not pushing on all ends. rachel: the simple truth is the only thing that's going to change is to hire women. catherine: just hire us. we're really good. the only way it's really going to change is if people just, like, make a concerted effort. people with money and power, which is studio execs -- and a lot of them are women. if they say we are going to have 50% women, let's just go for parity. ♪ lexi: the public has to get invested. because here is why it does matter. it does matter who tells the stories. the reason you have, you know, only size zero, you know, girls, who starve themselves to death, or you have 12-year-olds in certain outfits and everything is sexualized, that's because you don't have us behind the camera. so the public should get invested.

geena: and make it very simple, i say. don't worry about making more movies starring a female character. if you do, great. cast me. but let's say the network makes a decision -- we're going to hire half women, or take them on as interns or apprentices, whatever. if we added female characters at the same rate we are now, we will achieve parity in 700 years. it will be more like seven if i have anything to do with it. lexi: if i can somehow get my old self back and overcome this and say, look, i am just going to have to be back to before this happened and be the person i was when i got here, maybe i will write another film. rachel: i have a disease, a need to tell stories. because i am a director. i am a director. this is what i do. martha: don't listen to what they say. that you're not good enough or you can't do it, or you are incompetent or you are indecisive. it is all a lie. make your voice heard. that you are mad as hell and you're not going to take it anymore.

you can't take it anymore. or you won't have a career. ♪

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