For the vast majority of human time, there are no historical records and only a tiny number of artifacts. People died of old age at 30 and spent all their time hunting and gathering. And the artifacts that have been discovered could have been created by either a man or a woman -- there is simply no way to know. Again, I think the premises upon which you are building your arguments are deeply flawed.

This whole conversation feels totally off base. Some of the comments, like the "can they start now?" one actually make me feel kind of queasy. I think if I was one of the women poster's on this board I'd feel pretty insulted by this thread.

Now you are talking influence as much as art. Aretha, Oprah Winfrey and Madonna have contributed as much or more than any of these folks to Western culture, regardless of whether you like what they have produced.

Directing is a lot harder to get into because someone has to trust you with many millions of dollars. Since the men with the money are still, for the most part, men, it is hardly surprising that women have not risen very quickly in those ranks. I think "Twilight," with a $70 mil budget, is the largest ever provided by a studio for a female director.

The wikipedia list of box office bombs is interesting. Of the 20 biggest box office bombs of all time as a percentage of budget lost, none were directed by women. Of the 25 biggest box office bombs of all time in order of budget size, none were directed by women. Most of these films were made in the last 20 years.

My point is, of course there are no "great" female directors -- none have been given a shot to be great. Hollywood has preferred to give money to mediocre to bad male directors instead of giving a woman a shot.

I think that is what has gotten me so fired up on this topic.

I'm just trying to explore other possible reasons, i think i fired out 4 or 5, see if the cat licks it up.

I do find strange that the agreed up reason of unlevel playing field, it's all X group fault, is so accepted in this case. i wonder if this is the only time where blaming a group for anothers lack of success is so accepted. i don't necessarily disagree, but the uniqueness of this case i thought warranted some exploring

Well, I think you're missing that you've failed to convince most people here that your initial assumption is even the case. Are there less "great" females in the creative arts than in other areas? Are there less than there are "great" males? Until you can gather some consensus, and facts, on that we can't go anywhere.

Oh hell no.

Isn't there statistics that women overall are making it through higher education better than men? If that is the case it is probably only a matter of time before we have some woman on a message board of the future saying "where have all the creative men gone?".

Ya, I think the premise of this thread is inextricably flawed, and appears to be a sexist interpretation of the world at large rather than anything based on fact. It's all just a bunch of subjective jibber-jabber with some people trying to figure out why women apparently suck in creative roles, and apparently whether it's essentially too late for them to ever get good at it.

Another interesting study, reported in the NY Times for those who have an account:

hxxp://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/theater/24play.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1245851004-9tWahPnY/vX8g7oTjGUohQ

This might be wrong but I've heard that men are more likely to be geniuses or complete morons while women trend towards the middle a little more.

For starters, you are basing this discussion on your own predetermined definition of what greatness is and then trying to cram some argument around how women aren't great creatively based around your own set of who you think is great creatively. Not to mention it appears you are also narrowing down your definition of what is creative based on who you think is great.

With some of your arguments and comments, I'm really surprised people haven't taken a more harsh approach to you as the thread moves along. Then again, maybe we are all just sitting around, scratching our heads and thinking 'huh?'