Conspicuous lack of female videographers

Did anyone notice that there seems to be more male than female videographers? There seems to be an even amount of photographers but in video, not so much. If you are female, please speak up!! Do you think it is the technical aspect that scares the women off? My parents are both engineers, the more technical, the better, for me....and I am a techno-geek, I love new gadgets. Just stating an observation...tell me what you think. -Sandi

I'm female but you're probably right, the media course I finished last Friday had 5 girls out of 18 students. To be honest I still don't get 1/2 the technical aspects and the closest we came to covering codecs or technical aspects on my supposedly practical 2 year course seemed to be "this is widescreen, this one isn't".

I just do it because I enjoy it and hope that no-one in the street tries to hold a technical conversation with me while I'm out filming. 1/2 the reason I joined pond5 was to give me an excuse to film stuff and hopefully get better through practice. (As previously mentioned my course wasn't that great at actual teaching). - Georgina

Well ladies, my collage degree course in TV broadcasting was way back in 1985.....
We had about 40 people in the class, and there were more females then males..... Everyone had to take the TV 1 & TV 2 lab, which meant that they had to do every job associated with broadcasting... both in studio and on location...

Now granted, since then, cameras and equipmewnt have gotten smaller and lighter, but back then, the ladies use to complain about the weight of the equipment....so most of them use to concentrate on being the talent as often as possible....

Since then I found ( in my area anyway) most of the ladies are either in front of the camera, or are producers, directors, PA's, or some other behind the scenes positions...... You don't see many camera operators that are female, although in local TV studios, around here, there are a few...... but they usually just do studio camera work, no location stuff....

I'm on a number of stock photo sites and there are a ton of ladies on them that I know and speak with through email almost everyday, and they all do great work too..... but for some reason they aren't interested in the video side... ? I Guess they're happy doing what they're doing....:-)

As geo16 mentioned, I think the technical aspects "might" have something to do with it too......

I hardly ever come across female videographers... I know a few female DOP's though

I'm female, and after being in stock photo for a quite a few years I decided to try video. I've found that with video I can be a little more creative then with stock photos, but still have so much to learn....Kim

It is nice to meet both of you...I hope more women speak up.....and Frenchtoast, I agree, I was doing stock photo but this gives me more to work with, along with animation, I will never ever get bored.

This is probably the best way to practice I think.

This may seem like a "boys club," but don't be intimidated. I find a lot of people don't understand technical issues anyway, there seems to be a lot of misinformation out there about compression and sensor functions etc. Camera companies say a lot of stuff to get people to buy their cameras. Don't trust any technical info you hear from anyone, even from sexy beasts such as myself,.... fact check it yourself. :)

Dont worry about the technical aspects so much anyway, if the clip is beautiful buyers dont care about the format. Content is King. There is no reason why you all can't be great at this, dont let anyone (including yourself) make you think you cant do it just because youre a woman.

~Mark (Expirt spellor)

I'm a female videographer and I think I know one other personally. I started in video and also do photography and graphics, but video is my primary focus. Most videographers I know are male, and as a freelancer, when I work with another videographer, they seem pleasantly surprised to meet a woman in the business. I don't know why more women don't do video. Maybe it's a technical bias— people will say "good for you" but still treat you like you're a little strange. When I meet people, they're usually surprised to find out what I do. I guess that shows how many of us there are. There is a bit of a hump for some people at first. They need a minute to digest that I'm a woman, get over it, and then see me as a professional.

I am female!

Nice to meet you Sandi. Don't feel bad, I'm a nurse in my main profession and run into this thing often with people who are used to seeing women in the position.These things work both ways.