Drawn to Female Empowerment
Women of Disney TV Animation have made great strides in a field once dominated by white males.
As the cultural landscape shifts in all areas of entertainment, animation is also changing how it represents diverse characters and how it hires and embraces a more diverse workforce. In the halls of the Disney Television Animation studios, many women have already arrived at positions of incredible influence and creativity, and are doing what they can to see that this generation of women animators — and the one that follows them — have a voice that influences the kind of projects we see.
Whether they’re in positions overseeing the production of shows, influencing the overall direction that TVA undertakes, or creating and
writing the shows, many women have seen their projects go forward with tremendous support.
“I went to CalArts, which means there are a lot of people who work in the animation industry, and my class was kind of a big deal — everybody was talking about our class because we were maybe 40% women, because there had never been that many women studying animation there before that,” says Daron Nefcy, creator and executive producer of Star vs. The Forces of Evil. “I’m not exactly sure why there’s been a big shift in wanting to work in animation, but I was part of that, and it’s been exciting to see so many young women coming to work on our show. I had the opportunity to give a lot of women their first job in animation on Star, and they all kicked so much ass, and it was really cool to see.”
Winds of Change
“It’s been great to be at a point where we can treat our characters equally and just try to make good, interesting characters, no matter what the gender,” says Nefcy, who graduated from CalArts in 2009. “I think it was in the summer of my third year at CalArts I had the opportunity to pitch something to Cartoon Network. That was my first time pitching to people like that and I was very nervous and excited to do it. I got to round two, where I was able to storyboard a short