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The New York Times: While the television industry now counts producers like Shonda Rhimes, Jenji Kohan (“Orange Is the New Black”) and Jill Soloway (“Transparent”) among its most celebrated showrunners, progress has stalled overall when it comes to equal representation for women both on screen and behind the scenes.
This is so annoying. I am so tired of television written by men, for men. It's so boring. I think it's really true that while it's great that female creators are getting more attention, that essentially tells the world that "Oh, we're good now. Equality is here." Something that really upset me was the line, "On broadcast programs with at least one female creator, the study found, women made up 50 percent of the writing staff. On programs with no female creators, that proportion drops to 15 percent."
That sucks. Men never seem to even consider that women are viable options in so many fields. In one study about cellists, through auditions where the gender of the cellist was known, almost all of the accepted performers were men. During blind auditions, however, something like 75% of the accepted performers were women. Gender bias is a subtle thing, yet so powerful.
I’m just as enthralled with OITNB as the next person, with its diverse array of women and complex character roles I think it’s a great step towards equality between the gender gap in the television and film industries. However, that’s all it is, a step. Now all steps, all progress deserves to be noted, because you can only reach a goal one step at a time. However, when we celebrate these shows to the extent that we have been I feel that we give Hollywood another few years to hide in their bubble of subliminal gender discrimination. We let them use these few examples as a shield, when really as a society we need to be pushing, saying “This is phenomenal, let’s see mores shows like this,” until that turns into “Great! Let’s see more women playing complex roles in a wide arrange of television shows, not just shows about women.” We have to keep the ball rolling towards success, not let it stop at every victory.
These statistics are really disheartening, especially the ones about women working behind the scenes. Although it's good that some progress has been made, it's really frustrating that the growth of women in the industry seems to have stopped. Small victories tend to make us blind to the larger issues at hand. Like Cassidy said, gender bias is subtle and powerful. We need to praise the women of Orange is the New Black, but also empower the women trying to fight their way up the ladder. Women make up a little over 50% of the population, so I'm not going to be happy until we make up 50% of the film and TV industry. If that makes me an "angry feminist" then so be it, asking for equal representation shouldn't be considered asking for too much. It seems like every week there is a new article about the inequality of women on this blog, and I'm really happy that awareness of feminism is being raised at CMU.
3 comments:
This is so annoying. I am so tired of television written by men, for men. It's so boring. I think it's really true that while it's great that female creators are getting more attention, that essentially tells the world that "Oh, we're good now. Equality is here." Something that really upset me was the line, "On broadcast programs with at least one female creator, the study found, women made up 50 percent of the writing staff. On programs with no female creators, that proportion drops to 15 percent."
That sucks. Men never seem to even consider that women are viable options in so many fields. In one study about cellists, through auditions where the gender of the cellist was known, almost all of the accepted performers were men. During blind auditions, however, something like 75% of the accepted performers were women. Gender bias is a subtle thing, yet so powerful.
I’m just as enthralled with OITNB as the next person, with its diverse array of women and complex character roles I think it’s a great step towards equality between the gender gap in the television and film industries. However, that’s all it is, a step. Now all steps, all progress deserves to be noted, because you can only reach a goal one step at a time. However, when we celebrate these shows to the extent that we have been I feel that we give Hollywood another few years to hide in their bubble of subliminal gender discrimination. We let them use these few examples as a shield, when really as a society we need to be pushing, saying “This is phenomenal, let’s see mores shows like this,” until that turns into “Great! Let’s see more women playing complex roles in a wide arrange of television shows, not just shows about women.” We have to keep the ball rolling towards success, not let it stop at every victory.
These statistics are really disheartening, especially the ones about women working behind the scenes. Although it's good that some progress has been made, it's really frustrating that the growth of women in the industry seems to have stopped. Small victories tend to make us blind to the larger issues at hand. Like Cassidy said, gender bias is subtle and powerful. We need to praise the women of Orange is the New Black, but also empower the women trying to fight their way up the ladder. Women make up a little over 50% of the population, so I'm not going to be happy until we make up 50% of the film and TV industry. If that makes me an "angry feminist" then so be it, asking for equal representation shouldn't be considered asking for too much. It seems like every week there is a new article about the inequality of women on this blog, and I'm really happy that awareness of feminism is being raised at CMU.
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