left her job as president and CEO of CBS Films in 2011, she decided to go into business for herself.
, and it was during a 2018 board meeting that Baer realized she wasn’t alone in the challenges she faced.sat alongside Baer as board members opened up about the obstacles they had to overcome when starting businesses or making movies. As Schaffer and Baer conducted a back-of-napkin count of the women-led companies in the screen industry, they came up with a shockingly low number.
The research shows that women-owned production companies are in the minority when it comes to receiving studio subsidized deals, as well as independent financing from private investors, banks or venture capital. As of 2018, only 18.6% of studio-subsidized film deals and 35.7% of studio-subsidized television deals were inked with women-owned companies, and just 18% of production companies that received non-studio funding were women-owned.
Women in Film began to formally dig into these issues of parity in 2018, when board member Stasia Washington connected the organization with Pepperdine University’s department of Entertainment, Media, Sports and Culture and Jessop, a sports journalist and professor, who would attempt to figure out why there are so few female-owned and -operated companies in the industry.
“I sold my house to fund my business. Nobody was giving me any money,” one female entrepreneur told Jessop about her transition from working as a salaried studio executive to striking out on her own. She used the money from the sale to help finance a film and moved her family into an apartment. Furthermore, Jessop’s most statistically significant findings dealt with financial literacy. The study found that women felt less confident than men in their ability to structure deals and compete for capital and less assured in asking for the money they need. Though this study didn’t askwomen felt that way, Baer hypothesizes that the uncertainty comes from seeing other women ask and then struggle to succeed.