As Bad As The Gender Gap In Hollywood Is, Horror Directors Have It Worse

With more women joining the billionaires club, the glass ceiling women face in the working world is slowly cracking, but no matter how much that ceiling cracks, the underlying sexism within the industries — even in the arts — is still prevalent.

A study released last January, which corresponded with the Sundance Film Festival, revealed 4.4% of the top 100 movies each year from 2002 - 2012 were directed by women. A whopping 40% of the women polled said "male-dominated networking" was their biggest challenge. Bleak numbers were only to be made bleaker by Amy Pascal, a co-chair of Sony Pictures Entertainment, who, in an interview with Forbes last week, said, "For a woman to direct a movie in Hollywood, she has to go through so many layers of rejection by the powers that be...I think that the whole system is geared for them to fail."

Sadly, sexism in Hollywood isn't a surprise, but when it comes to the gory world traditionally geared towards men, the horror isn't just in the genre. Studies have shown that nearly half of the scary-flick goers are women, and most horror films are centered around women. But, Complex notes that for every one female horror director at a convention, there are dozens and dozens of male ones. Finding positive female director role models is difficult for an aspiring girl director, but fortunately pro-female conventions like Women In Horror Month and Viscera Film Festival are helping to spotlight them.

Jen and Sylvia Soska, a.k.a The Twisted Twins, are working to counter Pascal's beliefs. With their film, American Mary, they've garnered the praises of the top male horror directors in the field. "They look at it as not male and female, but as, 'Here's a cool genre that we love," says American Mary's producer John Curtis. "They're filmmakers first, I think, and females second. And they want other women to feel the same way about themselves." We couldn't have said it better, John. It's a slow uphill battle to climb, but if we girls stick together, follow the Twisted Twins advice in their awesome Complex interview (and maybe form an army like Bey's) we could show the boys how to really throw blood and guts like a girl. (Complex)