Implementing gender equality policies in the Spanish film industry: persistent prejudices and a feminist will to ‘exploit the centre into concentric circles’

Abstract

Over the last decade, gender equality measures like positive actions in public funding have been implemented in the Spanish film industry. This article discusses these measures by looking at both the gender order that has been embedded in the Spanish film governance regime since its origins and the ways in which such gender order re-emerges in the current context as expressed by women film workers. Two persistent prejudices that can be traced back to Franco's dictatorship are identified: Public funding as connected to censorship and/or lack of profitability, and the representation of women as incapable members of a so-called 'minority' that has to be assisted. Concrete measures including quotas are necessary for adjusting the unbalance in women's participation, but they are means towards an end that goes beyond quantitative changes, for the ultimate goal would entail transforming the structure of a patriarchal film governance regime from a bottom-up feminist approach.

Comparing gender equality policies in the Swedish and Spanish film industries: Defining the problem beyond the male norm

“…Calderón-Sandoval (2019) conducted 14 interviews with Spanish women working in above-the-line positions for a Marie Curie project about the visualisation of cultures of gender equality through cinema between 2016 and 2021. In 2021, she also conducted seven Zoom interviews with Spanish women active in both the film industry and feminist organisations, as well as with a representative of the Spanish Film Institute (ICAA), as part of a research project about the conditions faced by women in the Spanish film industry (Calderón-Sandoval, 2022). All these interviews were conducted in Spanish.…”

Enduring inequalities: Fifty years of gender equality talk in the media and cultural industries

“…There has now been significant contemporary scholarship on gender in the creative and cultural industries. This literature has analysed the effectiveness of existing policies (Calderón-Sandoval, 2021;de Boise, 2019;Jansson, 2019), regimes of gendered inequalities within these industries (Conor et al, 2015;Gill, 2002Gill, , 2014Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2015), the feminised and gendered dimensions of cultural labour more broadly (McRobbie, 2016), as well as historical accounts of women organising for change in these sectors (Baker, 2018;Galt, 2018Galt, , 2021. There has also been a string of recent studies documenting women's contemporary experiences of inequality in creative and media fields (Berridge, 2019(Berridge, , 2020Coles and MacNeill, 2017;Dent, 2020;Dooley and Erhart, 2021;Milner and Gregory, 2021;O'Brien and Liddy, 2021;Percival, 2020).…”