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The Value Gap
Female-Driven Films from Pitch to Premiere
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Book Presentation:
How female directors, producers, and writers navigate the challenges and barriers facing female-driven projects at each stage of filmmaking in contemporary Hollywood.
Conversations about gender equity in the workplace accelerated in the 2010s, with debates inside Hollywood specifically pointing to broader systemic problems of employment disparities and exploitative labor practices. Compounded by the devastating #MeToo revelations, these problems led to a wide-scale call for change. The Value Gap traces female-driven filmmaking across development, financing, production, film festivals, marketing, and distribution, examining the realities facing women working in the industry during this transformative moment. Drawing from five years of extensive interviews with female producers, writers, and directors at different stages of their careers, Courtney Brannon Donoghue examines how Hollywood business cultures “value” female-driven projects as risky or not bankable. Industry claims that “movies targeting female audiences don’t make money” or “women can’t direct big-budget blockbusters” have long circulated to rationalize systemic gender inequities and have served to normalize studios prioritizing the white male–driven status quo. Through a critical media industry studies lens, The Value Gap challenges this pervasive logic with firsthand accounts of women actively navigating the male-dominated and conglomerate-owned industrial landscape.
About the Author:
Courtney Brannon Donoghue is an assistant professor of media industry studies in the Department of Media Arts at the University of North Texas. She is the author of Localising Hollywood and the coeditor of Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines.
Press Reviews:
[Donoghue's book is] a nuanced assessment of how Hollywood’s structures and strategies marginalize female creatives by devaluing both their stories and their labor...Essential reading for anyone hoping to better understand gender inequality in Hollywood.
— Film Quarterly
See the publisher website: University of Texas Press
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