In the year in which Patty Jenkins became the first female director to be granted a budget over $100 million with Wonder Woman — and with the film’s success finally providing proof that women can get the job done, too — it’s safe to say progress is being made for women in film, even if just in tiny amounts. However, things move even more slowly in the animation industry because of the sheer size of the projects, which can take decades to complete. Meaning that if studios are reluctant to invest large budgets in female directors, the aversion is ten times worse for animated films.
A few years ago, a man named Kevin Burg unearthed a 75-year-old letter from Disney, addressed to his grandmother Mary Ford after she applied to be an animator at Walt Disney Studios. Dated from June 7, 1938, the letter rejected her application not because of her experience, but simply her gender, indicating that “Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men.”
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