He's not a cineaste if he hadn't heard of Sofia Coppola. Bloody hell. "Claimed" is the right word for sure.

On a related note, I wrote this a while ago about female directors working in horror today. You might be interested. :)

The Future is Female in Horror Cinema | Fanfare

To your other points, a lot of my favourite authors are female purely because the giants of the genre in which I write - gothic mystery horror-thrillers - are largely female (Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Susan Hill, Shirley Jackson, Daphne Du Maurier, more recently novelists like Laura Purcell, etc, etc). And obviously, I'm a huge fan of JK Rowling. :)