Blatant and rampant discrimination against women directors
Speaking of Hollywood…there’s that whole thing about how they systematically and deliberately keep women out.
The ACLU put out a statement about a federal probe last year. I wonder if Trump will be able to kill the probe. I think we can be sure that if he can he will.
May 11, 2016LOS ANGELES — A year ago, the ACLU of Southern California and the ACLU Women’s Rights Project asked the federal and California governments to investigate blatant and rampant discrimination against women directors in the film and television industries. The request was made after an ACLU investigation revealed an industry-wide pattern of gender bias and stereotyping that all but excluded women from directorial roles.
Melissa Goodman, director of the LGBTQ, Gender and Reproductive Justice Project at the ACLU of Southern California, had this comment:
“ACLU SoCal and the ACLU Women’s Rights Project are pleased that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs gave careful consideration to our findings and responded by launching a wide-ranging and well-resourced investigation into the industry’s hiring practices. We are encouraged by the scope of the government’s process and are hopeful that the government will be moving to a more targeted phase.
“In the year since our report was released, there has been much lip-service paid to furthering opportunities for women, but few definitive steps and no serious movement in the number of women directors hired. We are confident that the government will corroborate our work and push industry leaders to address the ongoing violations of the legal and civil rights of these directors and of all women in the film and television industries.”
May 2016. It still seemed possible back then.
Same thing on stage. Women directors, women playwrights, women actors. Studies have shown that scripts with women’s names are less likely to get read – by a large margin.
Women who write plays are told that the reason they get less attention is that they write plays about women and no one wants to see them. But the majority of theatre ticket buyers are…women. And plays by women often do better at the box office, sell more tickets…and run for a much shorter time. So it isn’t economics driving it.
Meanwhile, men who write plays about women (and there are many) are able to get those produced, even if they are written in a way that isn’t stereotyped or sexist or pointedly anti-feminist. They can be very much like the types of plays women write about women, and still get produced, because…well, mansplaining, I guess.
And if women only write plays about women, then wouldn’t that mean men only write plays about men? No, they write plays about events…about things…about issues…about whatever. Women don’t write about anything important. Lucy Prebble didn’t really write anything important when writing the play Enron, right? Caryl Churchill writes about very serious issues, such as the revolution in Rumania. But about the only time I see plays by women are the one play a year that a local college devotes to women writers, and that “yearly” event frequently skips two or three years.
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And the discrimination is blatant…
Look at what happened when a film festival decided to have anonymous submissions.
http://if.com.au/2017/01/25/article/For-the-first-time-women-make-up-50-per-cent-of-Tropfest-finalists/AJXXRQYBKD.html
Golly. That makes the point.
Yes, and I go regularly to theatre conferences where the submissions are blind; in recent years, most of those are turning up with more women AND more people of color.
Actually, I could easily see Trump delighting in a federal probe of the film industry: “Many people say Hollywood elitists are the REAL SEXISTS! Today I send in the feds! #ilovewomen #womenloveme #makehollywoodgreatagain”
His supporters would eat it up.