Women and Hollywood: The DGA has released its annual report tracking the statistics of directors on episodic TV shows for the 2012-2013 season, and the news is that there is no news. The numbers have remained pretty static since last year. In fact they have remained virtually the same for the last three years. The DGA Diversity committee has held over 20 meetings in the last three years with production companies and shows to deal with diversity.
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I am pretty sure I commented on last years version of this article but I have absolutely no idea what I said. Anyways, I am somewhat torn on this concept. On the one hand I get how they are all freaked out and feel that our world is unjustly balanced in the work place with a strong preference toward the male half of the population. Although I agree with this and have a serious problem with there being sexism in many workplaces, I'm not sure this particular topic is the tragedy they make it out to be. Honestly I think that the male to female ratio, in many workplaces, can simply be attributed to female preference. I know for a fact that there are females out there who would prefer to be stay at home moms rather than be working for their entire lives. I am one of them. Also I am pretty sure that the ratio of men verses women wanting to stay at home with kids is skewed toward the women. So really this is not a problem, it is just a matter of how large numbers of each sex chose to spend their time.
"...how is it possible, in this day and age, that more than a dozen series didn’t hire even a single woman or minority director all season?" I concur, I too, would like to know the answer to this question. As Andrew likes to say "this is a thin article on a fat topic." This only takes into account the shows that aired. But isn't true something like 150 pilots were previewed last year, and only 30-something were picked up? I'd like to see the stats on women v. men involved in those. I'm also curious as to why this article only takes into consideration the directors for television and not films.
The statistics in this article were disappointingly unsurprising. Today, of course there should be a much more even ratio of men to women directing tv shows. But I am not surprised to see that its still radically far off what it should be. And that what makes me more sad about this topic. Its not the numbers themselves, its that I'm not surprised by them as I should be. Today, we're in this place where we think women and men still are not quite treated equally, but we're pretty close right? Facebook and Yahoo have female CEOs, so we've got to be almost there. But we really aren't close and there just seems to be this attitude that there's nothing to be done about it. Eventually things will even out. Or maybe not as many women are pursuing directing. But I don't think these are the right attitudes. I don't think we're at the point where we can just wait for things to follow through. That said, I don't know what should be done in a case like this. Something like affermative action in the tv directing industry? But then we have to think about whether or not the quality of the show is being sacrificed because shows are forced to hire certain directors. I don't know, but either way I think that this is something we can't continue to be passive about. The numbers aren't changing, and thats not okay.
Pathetic. Yes it's true as April says that a lot of people won't work in a field as demanding as directing for their entire lives. It's very time consuming and intense, and not the eaaiest thing to juggle alongside say, parenthood. But I don't believe that this mitigates this problem, rather, I think it actually points to a larger one, where it is still the standard for men to be the breadwinners and for women to stay home and watch the kids. Yes, obviously maternity leave is still a valid thing, but I hope there is a way to encourage women who are passionate about their work to stay with it, and not just call child raising their only reason to retire. If a mother has a job that can better support the family, let's see more parents opting to be stay at home dads. It'll. help the numbers in every industry, not just ours.
Whenever I read an article like this, I'm always torn. Truthfully, I'm not sure this problem is fixable in the short term. I'd love to see more women directors in TV, but I'd be curious to see what percentage of TV directors as a whole (employed and unemployed) are women. This article would be more convincing if that statistic was included. If, in the entire pool of possible TV directors, 14% or 16% are women, then these statistics actually aren't terrible. If 50% of employable TV directors are women, then that's an entirely different story. It seems to me that the problem is that women as a whole are not represented in the pool of possible TV directors, not that women aren't getting hired. I think I need more information before I can form any real judgment of this article, and the feminist in me is mad at me right now, but I'm still not sure.
I wonder why there aren't a lot of female directors.
I wouldn't call myself the most feminist girl out there, and I think that some jobs are just better done by men. But I think that the job of a director is perfectly suitable for a women.
I wonder if it's that women just don't really go into the directing careers or that they don't get hired. Also I wonder if there is a real difference between how women and men direct.
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