If we don’t have a full range of voices reflected in what we see on screen and in the media, we don’t have a full reflection of human experience and therefore don’t have a fully equitable society. Because media is so intertwined with the world we live in.”

She referenced another USC study that looked at the way journalists cover war. The study found that female journalists wrote more humanistic stories and focused more on the victims and people affected by the war. Male journalists wrote about the more violent aspects of war.

“They had a very different vision of the world, and that vision was projected back out to audiences,” Libresco said. “We want the full range of voices to create more access to help tell those stories.”

When she isn’t consumed with her GSI duties, Ralko is her own writer, director, producer, music supervisor and editor on small-film projects. It’s impossible to untangle her work from her identity as a woman and a feminist.

“I think the things I think about are completely wrapped up in the fact that this is my specific set of identity markers,” Ralko said. “And that’s all the more apparent to me because I work alone. But I have friends that don’t work alone, and they will tell you the same thing — that who you are as a person is going to be reflected in whatever you make, whether that’s a story or a commercial for Pepsi or a feature film. The fact that a person makes it means that a person’s life was influenced there. And I don’t think those can ever really be separated fully.”

In addition to her Sundance position, Libresco produces and writes. She, too, noted that her identity as a woman and feminist influences the way she sees the world, and her work reflects that.

“I’ve always had the instinct to work on women’s stories — to work with women artists and to support women directors as a producer,” she said. “It’s a definite instinct for me because I knew there weren’t as many films from that point of view out there for women.”

Gellman said she does believe that female filmmakers shoot women differently than men do.

“It’s a different eye or a different perspective,” she said. “I think female directors shoot women as more of a whole. They seem like fuller characters; they’re not just there to serve the men.”

This difference in perspective is known as the male gaze, a term used in cinema to describe when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. Think Megan Fox lifting the hood of a car in “Transformers.”

During the Sundance roundtable, the women discussed the different ways in which they capture female sexuality onscreen. Director Liz Garcia talked about the sex in her Sundance submission, “The Lifeguard.”

“My film really deals with explicit female sexuality,” she said during the roundtable. “I mean, there’s cunnilingus in the movie. I think that tells you right there that this is a woman making the movie.”

“Though female directors are now a small part of the industry, we are an invisible minority. Even in government, we lack representation. It feels like we’ve gone backward. The cultural dismissal of women is so ingrained that the public, including women, doesn’t seem to perceive a problem.”
- Martha Coolidge, The New York Times, Aug. 14, 2012

So, according to Flinn, the glass ceiling isn’t even being approached.

And according to Petro, women have actually lost ground. She said there are ebbs and flows, but women aren’t on a truly forward trajectory in film or beyond.

“I think, today, there’s a backlash against feminism and a backlash to women’s rights, and you can see it at every level,” Petro said. “I think that a new generation has to be engaged to be attentive to reproductive rights, let alone to access and opportunities in various workplaces. I think that there still is incredible institutionalized sexism that needs to be addressed.