Women and Hollywood: As the new TV season starts, we get the annual look Boxed In: Employment of Behind-the-Scenes and OnScreen Women in 2012-13 Prime-time Television from Dr. Martha Lauzen at San Diego State (god bless her, she's now done this for 16 years since 1997-98) that shows how women fared behind the scenes and onscreen.
Women account for 28% of all individuals working as creators, directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and directors of photography. This represents an increase of two percentage points from 2011-2012 and only a 7% increase in 16 years. Yes, women are doing better. But I'm not going to shout from the streets that things are great, because we are still struggling to get to 30% in ALL roles behind the scenes in TV. Sixteen years ago we started at 21% and now we are at 28%. To me, that still sucks.
4 comments:
Okay. The statistics are very clear that more men are employed in the film/television business than women. I also clearly understand that close to nothing has been done to change this reality. Now, I am not a sexist individual; quite the opposite actually. I found this article eye opening, but I took it as more of a rant than anything. Did the author take into account new, groundbreaking shows with women leads being made such as "Orange Is the New Black"? Or, what about "Game of Thrones", "The Big Bang Theory", or even "The Walking Dead"? All of these are possibly the most popular and high grossing tv shows presently. And, guess who half of the cast consists of....STRONG women leads. Women are definitely appreciated and cherished in the entertainment business. That is all.
Isaac Miller
Women are more easily accepted onscreen than behind the screen. This is clearly also seen at film award shows. Just look at the audience members during a wide shot and you will see ten men for every single woman.
The statistics are very daunting. Yes, there are some shows with leading actresses, as mentioned in the statistics with women claiming 43% of all speaking characters and 43% of major characters in 2012-13. However that is not the biggest concern. It is the other statistics which are the problem. I don't see this article as a rant, I just see it as a list of facts and raw statistics which make you think.
I believe in looking at things from all angles, not just the bad and not just the good. Although it may suck that there has not been a prominent increase in the percentage of women working over the past 16 years, it is an achievement that there has been an increase at all. A 2% percent increase is no small percentage considering just how many people work in this industry in total. My point is, an increase is an increase. No increase is a small increase.
I think Jamila makes a great point about women being more accepted onstage than offstage. The statistic about how few directors are women was really upsetting, though not shocking. Unfortunately, though we in the entertainment community care deeply about these statistics, we are a very small group compared to the millions of people feeding money into the industry. This may be cynical of me but I think that until the public at large is as outraged as we are, things won't change as quickly as we'd like.
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