Women Making Inroads in Academic Institutions of the Male-Dominated Animation Industry

According to the Animation Guild, just 21 percent of the members of its union in Los Angeles County are women. And most of the animators who work in the nation’s television and movie industry are located in this area.

But a new study by Deborah Vankin of the Los Angeles Times, finds that over the past five years women are beginning to make major inroads in animation education. Her research found that at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, 71 percent of the students enrolled in its animation program are women. This spring 16 of the 26 graduates of the program are women.

Vankin’s research found that 65 percent of students in the John C. Hench Division of Animation and Digital Arts at the University of Southern California are women. And more than two thirds of the students in the master’s degree program in animation at the University of California, Los Angeles are women.