The organization announced Tuesday that it is aiming to achieve gender balance by 2020 in editing, scriptwriting, musical composition, cinematography and artistic direction, among other roles, within the fields of animation, documentary and interactive media.

The NFB considers these disciplines to be ones in which women are “minorities,” citing statistics gathered by Women in View, which in a study of 91 Canadian feature films released in 2013-2014 found that only 17 per cent were directed by women, 22 per cent written by women and 12 per cent employed female cinematographers.

“It’s past time that women take their rightful place in the film world,” said NFB president Claude Joli-Coeur, adding that the organization’s view of parity includes cultural diversity.

In working toward its goal, the agency will collaborate with organizations including Women in View, Réalisatrices équitables and Femmes du cinéma, de la télévision et des médias numériques to assess the state of the industry; and contact unions and technical schools in order to evaluate training possibilities.

The agency would also like to create a database for female professionals in the industry to submit their CVs, projects and portfolios.

The NFB released the results of another parity initiative on Tuesday. Last year, the agency announced that by 2019, half its projects would be directed by women and half its total production budget would be allocated to projects directed by women.

In 2016-2017, 44 per cent of NFB productions were directed by women (compared to 51 per cent directed by men and five per cent by mixed teams). Budget-wise, 43 per cent of production funds were given to projects led by women (vs. 40 per cent to projects directed by men and 15 per cent to ones overseen by mixed teams).

To give an idea of the work that lies ahead, the NFB revealed its figures for the proportion of women in various roles on projects made between April, 2016, and March 31, 2017. During that time, women represented 27 per cent of scriptwriters, 24 per cent of editors, 12 per cent of cinematographers and 13 per cent of soundtrack composers. Those figures are reflective of the reality within the film industry as a whole, according to the NFB, pointing to the above numbers from the advocacy group Women in View.

Women are well represented in key roles at the NFB, comprising 53 per cent of its producers and executive producers, and 50 per cent of its administrative council.

The NFB’s announcement comes just two weeks after SODEC made public new gender parity initiatives. In the coming months, the Quebec film funding agency will institute a “1 + 1” rule under which producers will be allowed to submit up to two projects for a given round of funding, on the condition that one of those projects be written or directed by a woman. (Previously the agency had a 2 + 1 rule, under which producers could submit a maximum of two projects, or three if one was written or directed by a woman.)