DEMANDS OF FEMALE REPRESENTATIONS IN SPANISH AUDIOVISUALS: A STUDY OF A DECADE OF ARCHETYPES OF WOMEN IN THE GOYA AWARDS
Abstract
In recent years, the Goya Awards have become a stage for the claims of the Spanish film sector due to the media coverage of the gala. Based on a methodological triangulation that applies case studies, content analysis, and in-depth interviews, this research proposes a new categorization of female archetypes in current Spanish cinema, proves the existence of gender discrimination through the stereotypical representation of women, and analyses whether these archetypes are also perpetuated and disseminated through high-end women's magazines and Sunday supplements. The main conclusion of this study is that the creation of a protectionist law to put an end to this marginalization is essential and a debt from Spain's historical and political past.
REIVINDICACIÓN DE LAS REPRESENTACIONES FEMENINAS EN EL AUDIOVISUAL ESPAÑOL: ESTUDIO DE UNA DÉCADA DE ARQUETIPOS DE MUJERES EN LOS PREMIOS GOYA
RESUMEN
Los Premios Goya se han convertido en los últimos años en escenario de reivindicaciones del sector cinematográfico español por la repercusión mediática de su gala. A partir una triangulación metodológica que aplica el estudio del caso, el análisis de contenido y entrevistas en profundidad, esta investigación propone una nueva categorización de arquetipos femeninos en el cine español actual, prueba la existencia de la discriminación de género a través de la representación estereotipada de la mujer, y analiza si estos arquetipos se perpetúan y difunden también a través de las revistas femeninas de alta gama y suplementos dominicales. La conclusión principal de este estudio establece que la creación de una ley proteccionista para acabar con esta marginación es imprescindible y una deuda del pasado histórico-político de España.
Keywords
Spanish Cinema, Goya Awards, women, gender stereotypes, demands
INTRODUCTION
State of the issue Female archetypes and actresses in Spanish cinema
The situation of actresses in the Spanish film industry has remained stagnant in the interpretation of characters subjected to male roles (Tello, 2016). Because of this, the most-valued actresses by the Spanish Film Academy between 2010 and 2020 have been awarded the Goya Award in the three categories of leading, supporting, and new actress, playing mostly characters stigmatized by that discrimination (Academia de Cine, 2020). The historical antecedents of the marginalization that has affected female characters and actresses in the last decade can be found in the mechanisms of Franco's socialization, such as those involved in cultural and cinematographic production, which have been transmitted to society and fiction productions of the last ten years. This is how the author Javier Jurado collects it in a study on gender roles in national cinema between 1940 and 1959:
for forty years, the national-Catholic indoctrination around morality and gender roles had a seldomly recognized scope until very recent times. It is, therefore, essential to look at the models established in the first years of the dictatorship to understand their evolution and adaptation to the legitimization strategies of both the dictatorship and the social order advocated by it (Jurado, 2017, p. 132).
The Civil War and World War II had created in Spain the need to rebuild the country from the demographic growth that would lead to increased productivity and economic improvement. Maternity and childcare became a priority for the state, which had the support of Catholic morality to ensure that this ideology penetrated the mentality of men and women. The woman became a minor under the guardianship of her father or her husband. The state, in the name of Christianity and the morality it created for the time, supervised the role of women in society and made sure that their behavior was the most appropriate for the repopulation of Spain (De Riquer, 2013, p. 293). Film during the dictatorship represented the roles of women that the ideology of that moment instilled. Also, those of men, which further reinforced inequality. Already in the sixties, foreign influence and a gradual openness caused censorship to relax. In 1964, La tía Tula (Miguel Picazo) warned about the pressure to which women are subjected (Rodríguez Sánchez, 2011, p. 133-134). As Jurado points out, these roles have been transmitted to current generations, being perceptible both in society and in film productions. However, "it is difficult to find on the current billboard an autonomous and socially committed woman, concerned about herself, interested in culture, travel, or the present with a healthy and full life" (Gordillo, 2010, p 101). As the author............... in ..................... indicates, in certain appointments of cultural positions during the sixties, the dictator's control of cinematographic messages is evidenced in favor of the massive indoctrination of the Spanish population and the consolidation of the objectives of the national-Catholic ideology:
José María García Escudero, colonel of the Air Force legal body, film critic, writer, and participant in the Salamanca Conversations, was elected by the Minister of Information and Tourism to occupy the position of General Director of Cinematography and Theater. García Escudero held his position between 1962 and 1967, initiating a time of change from the film and industrial point of view. From the beginning, García Escudero tried to carry out a personalized revolution characterized by the rationalization of the market, replacing the structures of the old cinema and betting on a new generation of filmmakers more attentive to the cultural potentialities of the cinematographer (Sánchez Rodríguez, 2013, p. 71)
The absence of women over the age of fifty in leading roles or of some relevance is a pending issue. Actresses over the age of sixty-five have it even difficult to play supporting characters (2010, p. 97). As recurring archetypes that Spanish cinema assigns to older actresses, it recognizes the following: "the sick grandmother, the old witch, the courageous grandmother, the happy grandmother, the mature woman in love, and the unfaithful grandmother" (2010, p.103-116). Interpreting the stereotype of "the mature woman in love" we find Adelfa Calvo, awarded by the Film Academy in 2018 with the Goya Award for Best Supporting Actress, who recognized being unequal compared to her fellow professionals. Her character was not written in the script as it appeared on the screen. The winner comments that the creation of the character is not only the responsibility of the scriptwriter and the director but also of the interpreter. In her case, she went one step further, dignifying a character conceived by a man (Javier Cercas), as a passive and irrelevant woman:
At first, my character didn't have a name, and I think we dignified her a lot by naming her. In the end, she ended up being called Lola. I think this is quite important, that a character called ´the caretaker` who ends up having an identity is something remarkable. I wanted to empower her a lot [...] This was possible thanks to the fact that the director changed many things according to suggestions that I was making (Personal communication, October 29th, 2020).
However, as the actress comments, not all directors are receptive to changing character characteristics indicated in the script. The role of the mother, inherited from the cinema produced during the dictatorship, is one of the most recurrent. As the author Virginia Guarinos collects in her classification of archetypes of women in the productions of the 21st century, 4 out of 17 archetypes of women are mothers, establishing the subcategories of: "mater amabilis" (loving and happy, whose life focuses on caring for her children and her husband), “mater dolorosa” (suffering), “castrating mother” (without tenderness, domineering), and “stepmother” (enemy of her stepchildren) (2008: 106-108). The author Kathlyn Everly considers that in Almodóvar's cinema, it is significant that he does not relegate actresses to playing the roles of mother, sister, or daughter, endowing his films with a variety of characters for women: "What Almodóvar does achieve to a great extent, is to represent in his films a variety of female characters that in some sense indicates that women are individuals and we do not always fit into categories pre-established by society, such as mother, sister, or daughter" (Everly, 2016: 183). According to the director, the character for which Julieta Serrano collects the Goya for Best Supporting Actress 2020 "is not just a mother, she is strong, like all those of her generation who raised Spain after the war" (Personal communication, January 26th, 2020). Another problem that affects the archetype is that most of the films are directed by men: “Women give prominence to women more frequently, reaching almost 50% of the productions made by female directors, as opposed to 80% of the male protagonism from which films directed by men suffer" (Tello, 2016).
It is worth mentioning the study byRodríguez (2018) that exposes how the Spanish cinema of the Franco regime (1939-1975) seemed to have fallen into oblivion, although she points out that at least, in the academic field, there is research in this context. The author proposes a study of that time with a feminine vision, studying the actresses who were part of that cinema. It can be seen how a group of pioneering women managed to gain a foothold in the industry as directors, producers, or screenwriters, although the ones who had the greatest visibility were obviously the actresses. This study proposes a proposal for female professional profiles.
The exclusion of women from direction and production is also explained since film reinforces their symbolic invisibility in the representation: “One of the strategies is not to make them the protagonists of the stories that are told, placing them as companions or assistants of the men's desires. Furthermore, female characters suffer from a representation deficit because they have moody and unsympathetic personalities; and they are attributed the most traditional gender values" (Bernárdez-Rodal and Padilla-Castillo, 2018: 1261).
Goya Awards and demands: characters for women
After the birth of the Film Academy on November 12th, 1985, the creation of national awards to promote Spanish productions, a professional census, and the creation of an Official Film School were imminent objectives. The first Goya Awards gala was held on March 16th, 1987, awarding 16 categories that increased over time (Pérez Granados, 2006: 19). Despite the success of these awards, the academic publications that analyze them are reduced to three. And although none of them deals with the issue of the most-valued actresses by these awards or the characters that have led them to collect the statuette, like this study, they have focused on aspects such as their marketing strategy (Castelló and Jover, 2018), their news coverage (Vizcaíno-Laorga, Montes y de la Torre, 2017), and the reports published between 2005 and 2014 on Elpaís.com (Freixa, 2015).
Due to its promotional nature, this awards gala broadcast live on Televisión Española is a powerful platform for disseminating not only consumable film products but also messages to society. For this reason, it has become, on occasions, the scene of social, economic, artistic, feminist, or even climatic protests (Meliveo, 2020, field observations). Chronologically, the causes that have been demanded during the Goya gala or the call on the red carpet and are documented by the Academy are: 1998, terrorism; 2003, the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies; 2004, ETA and the movie The Basque Ball: Skin Against Stone; 2008, the definitive dissolution of the Episcopal Conference; 2009, the danger of Opus Dei; 2011, Sinde Law; 2011, the anti-piracy measures promoted by the PSOE; 2012, protection of the victims of terrorism and the disqualification of Judge Garzón; 2013, the employment situation of actresses and public hospitals (Academia de Cine, 2020).
Since 2013, the official website of the Spanish Film Academy has not updated any more protest actions in the history of the Goya Awards. As the interpreter who won the Goya in 2018 for Best Supporting Actress for the film The Motive, Adelfa Calvo tells us, at the ceremony that same year, actions to demand equality took place, with significant repercussions in the press and on social networks. Her colleagues, attending the gala, carried a fan with the slogan "Más mujeres (More women)" and declared in the press the need for more female characters of greater narrative complexity and variety of profiles (Personal communication, October 29th, 2020).
The power of dissemination and scope of the Goya Awards are contemplated by workers in the audiovisual industry in Spain to make visible causes that they consider fair, as confirmed by Adelfa Calvo, who adds that this movement for equality was imported from the United States: “Since 2017, when all of the Me Too campaign happened in America, although we joined a little later, the message against the sexual abuse of women and the greater female presence in films was already thought by all of us, and we took the opportunity that a platform like the Goya Awards gives us to say many things that we cannot say, and we raised our voices" (Personal communication, October 30th, 2020).
The protest actions of the attending and awarded actresses in the 2017 and 2018 Goya Awards, and other 2018 film competitions such as the Malaga Festival, were promoted and organized by CIMA (Association of Women Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media by its acronym in Spanish). This is confirmed by Isabel Sevilla, one of the coordinators of this association, specifying some of the reasons why this institution was founded: “The roles assigned to women in fiction are subordinate to men, they have less visibility and presence, which conditions the characters that the fellows receive. From these roles, references for society are born that not only do not respond to reality but can be counterproductive for the desirable goal of equality." (Personal communication, October 30th, 2020).
Since the origin of this association in 2006, the fight for the inclusion of female characters who are not stereotyped in film productions has been a constant. As confirmed by actress Julieta Serrano, Goya for Best Supporting Actress 2020, "Today it continues to be a deeply rooted trend, characters are written for women based on other central characters played by men, and they are linked to power" (Meliveo, 2020, field observations).
Women's magazines
Women's magazines have been an instrument of reference and vindication for women since their beginning, as stated byMarrades (1978) about the Pensadora Gaditana, the first known feminist reference. "The Pensadora was an original anticipation of Spanish feminism as well as a happy beginning of women's press", although, however, it did not have a large following. Paradoxically, as reflected by Martín (2017) in her doctoral thesis, most of the publications that emerged were dedicated to female indoctrination issues such as education, moral education, and fashion. Therefore, historically, according to Hernández (2010), a distinction has been made between a women's magazine or press and a magazine or press for women: among the former are those whose theme refers to home, fashion, or beauty, and the latter are aimed at women with other types of interests, among which those of a feminist nature should be highlighted.
However, at present, high-end women's magazines are defined as “those aimed at a woman between 25 and 45 years of age of medium-high social level, which contents are focused almost exclusively on the fashion and beauty sectors” Cristófol and Méndiz (2010).
With which, since the beginning of this type of publication, women have seen a reflection of their aspirations in all their content and, therefore, the expected stereotypes for them could be deduced from them.
Taking into account the themes of women’s magazines, the study of the stereotypes of women reflected in them is more evident. Almansa and Gómez (2017) distinguish between the stereotypes reflected in advertising and those reflected in the content between 2007 and 2014. The content mainly includes the role of the chic and glamorous woman; B García and Leoz (2010), affirm that "The visual elements used in the composition of the covers propose stereotyped and limited female models", and that the role of characters most repeated on the covers is that of an actress.
OBJECTIVES
The objectives set out in this research are:
1) Establish the categories of female stereotypes represented by the most-valued actresses by the Film Academy between 2010 and 2020;
2) Analyze the female archetypes interpreted by the actresses awarded with a Goya between 2010 and 2020
3) Study if there is gender discrimination in the conception of these archetypes and the consequences that derive from this way of creating characters for women
4) Analyze the reflection of these archetypes in women's press (high-end women's magazines and Sunday supplements dedicated to women) as a way to perpetuate this discriminatory representation of women
METHODOLOGY
The methodology used to carry out this research has been methodological triangulation. For García et al., triangulation is a methodological strategy in which different methods converge for the study of the same phenomenon.
On the one hand, a case study has been carried out, which forCarazo (2011) is defined as a “valuable research tool, and its greatest strength lies in the fact that it measures and records the behavior of the people involved in the studied phenomenon”, then a content analysis has been carried out to extract “structures and models (…) based on deduction” (Bardín, 1991), and to close this research, various in-depth interviews have been conducted understood as "flexible and dynamic" research instruments. (Díaz et al, 2013).
Therefore, to respond to the objectives set, a case study of the female characters awarded at the Goya Awards in the categories of leading, supporting, and new actress between 2010 and 2020 has been carried out. This sample of 33 female characters has been classified according to the stereotypes established byGuarinos (2008) andPlanes (2010) and reworked from the archetypes found after carrying out the present research.
Next, a content analysis of the high-end women's magazines and Sunday supplements dedicated to women in which these award-winning actresses have appeared was carried out, identifying in each case whether the represented stereotype was reflected in said publication. All the publications that contained the name of the award-winning actress a year before and a year after being awarded the award have been analyzed (Eg. Lola Dueñas, awarded in 2010, has been searched from January 1st, 2009 to December 31st, 2011), except for the winners in 2020, which have only been analyzed until the end of 2020, due to the limitations of the research.
The chosen female publications have been these categories because they are the ones with the highest penetration among the female gender according to the General Media Study of 2020. The high-end magazines, according to Cristófol and Méndiz (2015), which have been analyzed are Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Marie Claire, Telva, and Vogue, and the two Sunday supplements on the current market S Moda and Mujer Hoy. The search was carried out through the virtual newspaper library Mynews.
To close this triangulation, personal interviews have been carried out through open questions to professionals awarded by the Film Academy in the studied period: Julieta Serrano (Goya Award for Best Supporting Actress 2020), Adelfa Calvo (Goya Award for Best Supporting Actress 2018), and Pedro Almodóvar (Goya Award for Best Director, Original Screenplay, and Film 2020). To complete the vision, Isabel Sevilla, coordinator of CIMA (Association of Women Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media) has also been interviewed. In the case of Adelfa Calvo and Isabel Sevilla, their interviews were conducted through the phone and WhatsApp audios. In the case of Julieta Serrano and Pedro Almodóvar, in person at the backstage of the Goya Awards 2020 during the celebration of the gala, on January 26th, 2020.
DISCUSSION
Guarinos establishes the following female archetypes in Spanish cinema: “the good girl, the angel, the virgin, the blessed, the bad girl, the warrior, the femme fatale, the mater amabilis, the mater dolorosa, the castrating mother, the stepmother, the monster's mother, the childless mother, Cinderella, the eburnea turris, the black queen/witch/black widow, the villain, the superheroine, and the dominatrix” (2008, pp. 115-118). On the other hand, José Antonio Planes, in his study of women in Spanish cinema, classifies female characters in the national stereotypes that he considers most frequent, such as: “The housewife, the child prodigy/singer/folkloric girl, famous women, and the religious one” (2010, pp. 215-243).
Unlike these authors, this research has chosen to name the archetypes according to the characteristics that most define them, so their description is not explicitly detailed in this section. Based on this theoretical framework, this research has established the following classification of the female characters played by the actresses awarded a Goya Award in the indicated period, according to the archetype they represent:
|
Edition |
Leading actress |
Archetype |
Supporting actress |
Archetype |
New actress |
Archetype |
|
2020 |
Belén Cuesta |
Sufferer |
Julieta Serrano |
Mother |
Benedicta Sánchez |
Mother |
|
The Endless Trench |
Pain and Glory |
Fire Will Come |
||||
|
2019 |
Susi Sanchez |
Mother |
Carolina Yuste |
Woman who supports a noble cause (women) |
Eva Llorach |
Woman who supports a noble cause |
|
Sunday's Illness |
Carmen & Lola |
Who Will Sing to You |
(women) |
|||
|
2018 |
Nathalie Poza |
Fighter |
Adelfa Calvo |
Fighter |
Bruna Cusí |
Mother |
|
Can't Say Goodbye |
The Motive |
Summer 1993 |
||||
|
2017 |
Emma Suárez |
Mother |
Emma Suárez |
Mother |
Anna Castillo |
Fighter |
|
Julieta |
The Next Skin |
The Olive Tree |
||||
|
2016 |
Natalia de Molina |
Mother |
Luisa Gavasa |
Mother |
Irene Escolar |
Fighter |
|
Food and Shelter |
The Bride |
An Autumn Without Berlin |
||||
|
2015 |
Bárbara Lenie |
Crazy |
Carmen Machi |
Mother |
Nerea Barros |
Mother |
|
Magical Girl |
Spanish Affair |
Marshland |
||||
|
2014 |
Marian Álvarez |
Caregiver |
Terele Pávez |
Witch |
Natalia de Molina |
Fighter |
|
Wounded |
Witching & Bitching |
Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed |
||||
|
2013 |
Maribel Verdú |
Witch |
Candela Peña |
Object of seduction of a man |
Macarena García |
Fighter |
|
Snow White |
A Gun in Each Hand |
Snow White |
||||
|
2012 |
Elena Anaya |
Sufferer |
Ana Wagener |
Caregiver |
María León |
Fighter |
|
The Skin I Live In |
The Sleeping Voice |
The Sleeping Voice |
||||
|
2011 |
Nora Navas |
Mother |
Laia Marull |
Crazy |
Marina Comas |
Friend of |
|
Black Bread |
Black Bread |
Black Bread |
||||
|
2010 |
Lola Dueñas |
Crazy |
Marta Etura |
Woman of |
Soledad Villamil |
Fighter |
|
Me Too |
Cell 211 |
The Secret in Their Eyes |
Source: Self-made (Academia de Cine, 2010-2020)
A notable difficulty that this study has faced in establishing the archetypes in a differentiated way is the contamination of stereotyped characteristics of some categories from others. The archetypes are made up of mixed characteristics from other stereotyped characters. To determine them, the criteria of the researchers prevailed, analyzing the qualities that stood out above the others in each character. The most representative cases are those of "the caregiver", "the sufferer", and the "fighter", whose characteristics are also largely attributable to the mother characters. In fact, the category of “the caregiver” has not been represented in the indexes in a higher percentage because it has been separated from the category “mother”. Pedro Almodóvar shows in Pain and Glory (2020), how he joins this way of designing the characters that are mothers, and until her last days, the role played by Julieta Serrano asks her son for explanations about his behavior, in an overprotective way: “the night before filming the sequence of Julieta and Antonio in which she asks him for explanations, this same sequence occurred to me. I wanted to give more depth and prominence to the character of the mother" (Personal communication, January 26th, 2020). It is yet another example of how a character can acquire characteristics without being previously written or planned, as reflected in the statements of Adelfa Calvo. In the case of Pedro Almodóvar, these characteristics that he adds to the character of Serrano further reaffirm the archetype of "caregiver mother", confirming that this stereotype is notably contaminated by others such as that of a "caregiver" woman.
In the category "woman/friend of", which indicates the existence of a female character subordinate to that of a male, it should be noted that the "mother" archetypes have not been counted, which obviously are roles that exist because the characters of children have their place in fiction. In the category of "crazy", there is a character notably contaminated by the archetypes of "woman of" and "sufferer". The archetype of a caregiver woman that Ana Wagener plays in The Sleeping Voice (Benito Zambrano, 2012) is contaminated by that of the fighter, and could well be considered the role of a mother of the prisoners. Wagener gives life to one of the prisoners who tries to help political prisoners to cope with their captivity, so she is a character in which characteristics of various archetypes converge, something that is repeated in the analyzed sample.
The woman "object of the seduction of a man" is also present in the sample represented by Candela Peña in one of the various plots that intersect in the film (Gay, 2012). This brings us closer to the studies of Mulvey, who affirms that “in a world ordered by sexual imbalance, the pleasure of looking has been divided between active/masculine and passive/feminine” (1999, pp. 808-809).
In this last decade of film production in Spain, the representation of archetypes of women reflected in the characters of those actresses whose performances have been most valued by the Academy has been distributed as indicated in the following graphs.
Graph 1. Percentage of female archetypes represented by the actresses awarded with a Goya between 2010 and 2020
Source: Self-made
Of all these archetypes, the mother is the most repeated, collecting the legacy of the stereotypes that Virginia Guarinós identifies in her study (2008, pp. 115-118). The stereotyped mother can be classified in turn into other subgroups with characteristics of female archetypes that are not parents and are represented in the films of the sample studied by this research. These "sub-archetypes" of the mother character have been represented distributed as follows:
Source: Self-made
After analyzing the content of the magazines and supplements, it has been observed that the actresses with the greatest media coverage are those awarded for playing the characters of "mother" and "fighter" women. It is a noteworthy fact that these percentages of representativeness are increased compared to those resulting from the analysis of characters whose performances have been awarded. It is also noteworthy that repetitive female archetypes such as “caregiver” are not represented in print media. Nor does the "crazy" archetype appear, a detail that would explain the invisibility of real problems suffered by women but which are, nevertheless, socially hidden.
Graph 3. Percentage of archetypes with the greatest impact in women's magazines Source: Self-made
CONCLUSIONS
After the analysis carried out, this research has shown that in the second decade of the 21st century, there continues to be notable sexist discrimination in the film industry in Spain, relegating actresses to a situation of marginalization compared to actors to access jobs and maintain their work activity over time. This inequality has been shown to have even affected the most media-famous actresses in the sector who were awarded a Goya Award in the analyzed period, from 2010 to 2020, so to all those who have not obtained any honorable mention, this discrimination has obviously affected them more aggressively. The difficulty of actresses to access the labor market of the film sector in Spain is produced by various causes, some of which have been dragged from the past:
1. Character design for women is stereotypically done. In this last decade, the archetypes played by the most-valued actresses by the Academy have been mainly mothers whose full dedication to their children is not valued as such, since it is assumed that they must perfectly fulfill their role as protectors of their offspring whatever age they are. This is the case of the character of Julieta Serrano in Pain and Glory (Almodóvar, 2020), who even in her last days asks her son to account for his behavior in a protective act so that he does not lower his guard and, thus, provoke an extension of her care when she is away. Today, our society and the labor market continue to suffer the burden due to the ideological indoctrination of the dictatorship, the National Catholicism that, to repopulate Spain, educated the population to carry the burden of caring for children and the home on women as if it were a moral and economic obligation for the common good, in favor of the needs of the homeland (De Riquer, 2013, p. 293). Characters of female fighters also stand out quantitatively, who throughout the films do not come to be considered heroes despite carrying out feats. The inclusion in this sample of the character of a witch who hates men played by Terele Pávez in Witching & Bitching (Álex de la Iglesia, 2011) is significant, understanding by extension that the fact of feeling this animosity towards the male gender already makes a woman a despicable being, without questioning if the subjects detested by her are worthy of such sentiment. The other archetypes of the sample, such as the crazy woman, the woman of/friend of, the sufferer, the defender of noble causes (and of other women), or the caregiver are restricted to a poor conception of characters. Heroism and the value of work as mothers, caregivers, and fighters are processes that are not manifestly or strikingly related to their characters.
2. Stereotypically designing female characters subtracts narrative richness from female roles, thereby reducing them, making the work for actresses decrease compared to that of men.
3. High-end women's magazines help to perpetuate sexist discrimination against actresses in Spanish cinema, spreading their image in a biased way that is impaired by the patriarchal connotations indicated throughout this work.
4. As the author Lucía Tello points out, the design of stereotyped female characters derives from the more difficult access of women to direct feature films compared to men. In her 2016 study, the figures indicate that: “Women give prominence to women more frequently, reaching almost 50% of the productions made by female directors, compared to 80% of the male protagonism that films directed by men suffer" (Tello, 2016).
As shown in the section "Goya Awards and demands: characters for women", Spanish actresses have struggled in the last decade to demand a situation of equality. Specifically, at the 2018 Goya Awards, the actress Adelfa Calvo confirms that they raised their voices and carried out actions coordinated by CIMA (Association of Women Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media). The interpreter also confirms that she has contributed something important to the fight for the fundamental rights of actresses, explaining how the character for which she receives the Goya for Best Supporting Actress 2018 was written without the background or the qualities that she gave by convincing the director of The Motive (Cuenca, 2017) so that what was written in the script could be changed. She even gave it a name that it didn't have in the reprint. However, as she also points out in the interview granted to this research, it is something isolated that depends on the intellectual capacity and courage that a specific actress has to carry out this individual initiative, and on how receptive the director of the project is to allow changes (personal communication, October 29th, 2020). It is demonstrated that the Spanish actresses in the industry have fought and demanded their right to equality individually or in groups, even institutionally organized. Despite this, their voices have not been taken into account to end the oppression they have suffered for more than a century. Therefore, as a final conclusion, this research expresses the urgent need for cultural institutions and the Ministry of Equality to promote a law that helps actresses to overcome this discriminatory and unfair situation, because during the dictatorship a sexist decree was approved whose effects continue to aggressively marginalize them today as professionals and as women.