ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): In 2009, director Neil Armfield stood on the stage at Sydney's Belvoir St Theatre and announced, for his swansong season as artistic director of the company he co-founded, a season of shows almost exclusively written and directed by men.
It was a moment that prompted considerable scrutiny of industry-wide gender disparity.
In that year, at the eight best-funded Australian theatre companies — members of the Major Performing Arts Group (MPAG) — just 24 per cent of plays were written by women, and 24 per cent were directed by women. A staggering 86 per cent of productions had at least one man as writer or director.
2 comments:
This is exactly why I argue constantly for transparency in numbers. This includes salaries, but extends beyond that. Last week when I talked about Disney, I noted how they had the ability for a long time to uphold this image of equality because of good pr, but when it comes down to the numbers, there are a ton of issues. I hope the taboo about discussing wages goes away in light of these kinds of events. We cannot know how well we are doing in terms of equality if we do not try to look at the actual data. Confronting the numbers is how we motivate the necessary change. I am glad that this theater took a look and corrected it. It also makes me really happy that they did not just talk about women. Diversity among all categories is important. I really hope other theaters see this and follow suit.
It’s really inspirational to see the industry in Australia not only taking steps to balance gender disparity, but actually getting results. And not only increases in women in the field, but an equalizing. 58% of directors being women in their season and 47% of playwrights is amazing. And I am happy to see also that they are not overcompensating by doing an all-female season or something along those lines because I feel like actions like that really miss the point in my opinion. Reading this, I’m also disappointed in the slow progress and abundant excuses being made in the U.S, especially since now we have very clear workable evidence of a successful balancing act. I’m also impressed (and its disappointing that I am impressed by this) that Australia pulled this off in 2019 and not 2021 or 30 or 50 or however long it’s going to take the American industry to get it’s act together. The fact that this issue was not only noticed but tackled in 2009 to bring them to where they are now is amazing. But ten years is a long time. I feel like it’s so simple to just hire women goshdarnit that we could rebalance the gender disparity in one season if we would just *DO IT* but I guess it isn’t that easy? Maybe we have to just keep sneaking women in there for a while until we slowly but surely make it to 50% and hope nobody notices? I genuinely have trouble wrapping my mind around why this is so difficult a thing to just *do*, but I guess it’s just hard for people to get on board with such a ridiculous proposition like “women doing things.”
Post a Comment