As part of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Chairmanship of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, a highlevel

conference on “Women in today’s European film industry: gender matters. Can we do better?” was held in

Sarajevo on 14 August 2015. Representatives from many European ministries of culture and film funds attended

the conference, and a declaration was adopted, calling on the Council of Europe to encourage member states to

implement policies to reduce gender imbalance in the European audiovisual industry.

The declaration first recalled the Committee of Ministers 2003(3) Recommendation on balanced participation of

women and men in political and public decision-making (see IRIS 2013-8/3), and the Committee’s “Council of

Europe Gender Equality Strategy 2014-2017”. In particular, it was recalled that “gender equality means an equal

visibility, empowerment, responsibility and participation of both women and men in all spheres of public and

private life”. To this end, the declaration acknowledged the “importance of audiovisual works in European culture

and the significant role which the Council of Europe, through its cinema co-production support fund Eurimages,

plays in the production and promotion of European cinema”.

Based on material presented at the Sarajevo conference, the declaration observed that women are “considerably

underrepresented in key job roles in the film industry”, are “at a significant risk of receiving less favourable

treatment than men, in terms of both pay and film funding opportunities”; and that “their work achieves less

recognition than that of men”.

The declaration calls on the Council of Europe “to encourage its member states to implement policies to reduce

the gender imbalance in the European audiovisual industry with a view to bringing about a lasting and widespread

improvement in the situation; this involves enhancing women’s access to key posts in the audiovisual industry

and film-making, so that they can express themselves, drawing on their talent, their perspective and their authenticity”.

In particular, the Council of Europe was called upon, through its Eurimages Fund, to engage in a number of activities,

including (a) encouraging member states to produce gender-based statistics and analyse the causes of the

marginalisation of women; (b) encouraging member states to adopt equality policies aimed at improving the access

to public funding for women; (c) developing measures for improving gender balance in decision-making posts

in the industry; (d) enhancng the visibility of female filmmakers; (e) raising awareness through holding/organising

conferences, publishing studies, and collecting and disseminating examples of best practice; and (f) encouraging

film-makers to be more sensitive to on-screen female representation.

_ Bosnia and Herzegovina Chairmanship of the Committee Ministers of the Council of Europe, “Women in today’s European film industry: gender

matters. Can we do better?”, Sarajevo, 14 August 2015

http://merlin.obs.coe.int/redirect.php?id=17667

_ Council Europe, Council of Europe Gender Equality Strategy 2014-2017, February 2014

http://merlin.obs.coe.int/redirect.php?id=17668

Ronan Ó Fathaigh

Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam