Some rushed love for Female Film Critics

It's International Women's Day.

You can go elsewhere to find reams of appalling statistics and analysis telling us just how far we've got to go before there are equal opportunities for women behind the camera and in front of it. This inequality extends, of course, to women film critics, commentators and scholars. I'm not here to talk about that.

Me, I'm struggling to stay in the game.  Freelance film writing is poorly paid, sporadic, and takes far longer to do properly than most people realise. Like most journalism, it's a struggling profession (if film reviewing ever was a profession) and most of us, men and women, do it for the love of it. I reckon I spend 20 hours a month watching films for a one-hour unpaid podcast, Hell is for Hyphenates. It's a fun gig, I enjoy working with my hilarious co-host, Lee Zachariah, and it stretches me to watch both old and new films.

I know how lucky I am to be able to afford keep writing about film while I'm working on my novel. I do the odd film review for SBS Movies, write a quarterly column on the Australian film industry  for Metro magazine, and I've been doing some creative film-related features for Neighbourhood. I don't really have a job, though.

Right this minute, I'm juggling the demands of a teenager home from school with a homework-related migraine, a partner with a serious illness, and a darling dog who seems to need as much attention as a toddler. I feel grateful if I manage to get to the cinema two times a week, and I watch most things at home on a laptop. Not ideal.

One of the ways I keep myself sane and interested in current cinema is by reading and listening to what others have to say about it, and especially what other women have to say about it.

In celebration of International Women's Day, here are just five of my favourite young women writing and talking about films right now. Look up their work, follow them on Twitter, listen to their podcasts. Apologies to all the other amazing women I haven't mentioned. There are multitudes of you, including festival directors, programmers, academics and agitators Keep up the good work and thanks for making the conversation about cinema so intelligent, informed, nuanced, personal, angry, funny and freewheeling.

Love you. xx

Joanna Di Mattia: Blogs at In a Lonely Place. Tweets at @JoannaDiMattia

Christina Newland: Writes for places like Sight & Sound. Website at The Betamax Revolt. Tweets at @Christinalefou

Eloise Ross: Podcasts at Cultural Capital and Senses of Cinema. Tweets at @EloiseLoRoss

Mel Campbell: Podcasts at The ReReaders. Tweets at @incrediblemelk.

Rebecca Harkins-Cross. Website. Tweets at @Rharcross.

Want to shout out to some others? Leave us a note in the comments.