[custom_adv] In the past few years, Hollywood has been trying to become more female-friendly through initiatives that look to hire more women in front of the camera and behind the scenes. But, Hollywood still has a serious woman problem. [custom_adv] The world we actually live in often falls behind the world that Hollywood projects onto our screens. The appetite for cultural change — whether via conversations about race, gender, politics, or...orgasms — may thrive in entertainment, but it, in fact, stalls in real life when faced with barriers like bias, warring legislators, and Matt Damon trying to talk about. [custom_adv] Women have a long history in the film, often serving as pioneers, yet they remain underrepresented in the industry. Learn all about the history of women in film, notable “firsts” and efforts to recognize, celebrate and increase opportunities for women in the industry. [custom_adv] One of the stranger things about the history of moviemaking is that women have been there all along, periodically exercising real power behind the camera, yet their names and contributions keep disappearing, as though security had been called, again and again, to escort them from the set. [custom_adv] In the early years of the twentieth century, women worked in virtually every aspect of silent-film-making, as directors, writers, producers, editors, and even camera operators. The industry—new, ad hoc, making up its own rules as it went along—had not yet locked in a strict division of labor by gender. [custom_adv] Women came to Los Angeles from all over the country, impelled not so much by dreams of stardom as by the prospect of interesting work in a freewheeling enterprise that valued them. [custom_adv] Some scholars estimate that half of all film scenarios in the silent era were written by women, and contemporaries made the case, sometimes with old stereotypes, sometimes with fresh and canny arguments, that women were especially suited to motion-picture storytelling. I [custom_adv] In the past few years, Hollywood has been trying to become more female-friendly through initiatives that look to hire more women in front of the camera and behind the scenes. But, Hollywood still has a serious woman problem.