Ruby Rich’s explanation for why we see more female editors than directors: “Editing is the great exception, as closed work in dark rooms dedicated to making the guy look good — that’s a job for a woman.”

“It’s the perennial and persistent sexism that accounts for why women are not as represented in the industry — certainly not as directors,” Petro said.

With recent trends in gender barriers to filmmaking in mind, the Sundance Institute commissioned an unprecedented study into the status of female filmmakers in the independent film industry. Scholars from the University of Southern California probed the issue, and while it focused on the independent world, the findings illuminate problems women face throughout the film industry.

According to Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer Caroline Libresco, “as there’s more power on set, there’s a decreasing number of women.”

Emily Lyon, a senior dual-enrolled in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance and LSA, explained that women in any kind of leadership position have to walk a fine line. She said women are expected to be generous and inspiring and are not necessarily allowed to be commanding.

“Because they don’t want to be called a bitch,” she said.

In a directors’ roundtable at the Sundance Film Festival in January, five female filmmakers with movies in this year’s festival discussed society’s divergent expectations for women and men, noting that women are socialized to be more collaborative, while men are socialized to be more aggressive in the way they lead.

Commanding men are ambitious; commanding women are bitches.

This double standard can be seen in the media’s hypercriticism of female pioneers in the industry. Flinn used the ever-increasing backlash against “Girls” creator Lena Dunham as an example.

“She’s enormously talented, and it’s all of a sudden great to dump on her now,” Flinn said. “It just seems like there’s really not room at the table for women, and I don’t understand that.”

Lyon, too, pointed to the double standard in Dunham hate.

“I don’t recall anyone saying ‘Woody Allen, what are you doing writing, directing and acting in your movies? You’re not an attractive male!’ That was never an issue,” she said. “I do think we are hypercritical in terms of appearance, and film is very much about appearance.”

And when women aren’t scrutinized, they’re ignored.

Even Kathryn Bigelow, the only woman to ever win the Academy Award for directing, was passed over when the nominations came out this year. “Zero Dark Thirty” received five nominations, including Best Picture and Lead Actress, but Bigelow wasn’t recognized.

“It does seem like when movies fail of female directors, the fall is really hard sometimes,” Flinn said.

While “Zero Dark Thirty” wasn’t a failure, the politically charged debate surrounding the film has overshadowed her continued success as a filmmaker.

Last year, the LA Times investigated the composition of the mysterious Academy, which doesn’t publicly release a list of its voting members. The report found that nearly 94 percent of Oscar voters are Caucasian and 77 percent are male.

“I think sometimes they’re still a little gender blind in terms of who even gets nominated,” Flinn said. “I think that still there’s a lot of underrepresentation and underconsideration of female talent, except for in the obvious Actress categories.”

In addition to expanding access to directing, Katy Ralko, a Ph.D.