The document discusses why directing is often perceived as a male pursuit. It notes that research has found women lack confidence in their ability to be directors and often leave the film industry earlier than men. The development of auteur theory, which viewed the director as the author or artist of a film, excluded female directors. As a result, young women today have few female role models in the history of film directing. The document proposes creating an artifact that introduces statistics on female directors and links this to the exclusion of women in the development of auteur theory, in order to spark conversation about changing perceptions of directing as a male-dominated field.