Fixing Hollywood’s gender issues
In 2015, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began investigating allegations of Hollywood’s systematic, discriminatory hiring practices against female directors. By February of this year, the major Hollywood studios were in settlement talks with the EEOC, according to the website Deadline Hollywood.
It is not yet clear what measures the studios will take to resolve the issue, but industry representatives reportedly rejected a variation of the NFL’S ‘‘Rooney Rule’’, used to increase racial diversity among pro football coaches. Applied to Hollywood, it would require studios to interview female candidates and candidates of colour for every director job.
Insisting on inclusive hiring is hardly a revolutionary idea. Producer-director-writer Ryan Murphy has already surpassed his own goal of hiring 50 per cent female directors on his TV shows, and he asks each of his department heads to hire 50 per cent women as well. Similarly, director Ava Duvernay dictates that department heads on her projects can’t bring her all-white, all-male crew hire lists.
The more studios put such hiring practices into place, the better the industry’s chances of addressing its gender imbalances. But other measures would also be effective. Simply by adopting parent-friendly practices, Hollywood would be all but guaranteed an increase in its female workforce.
Just look at the numbers. Of the 125 people appearing on the Hollywood Reporter’s 2016 list of powerful players in the industry, 105 were men (84 per cent) and only 20 were women (16 per cent). What is seldom talked about, however, is a further disparity: The list included 70 dads (56 per cent ), but only 11 mums (8.8 per cent).
Even though the United States is one of only two countries in the world that does not guarantee paid maternity leave, some companies, especially in Silicon Valley, offer parents of any gender a substantial amount of paid time off when a child is born or adopted. The major Hollywood studios should follow suit.
But because production work mostly falls to freelancers, parental leave is only a partial answer for women in the industry. It would improve conditions for full-time studio employees, but that won’t increase the number of female directors, for example. Directors, especially women, often find it hard to get their second features greenlighted, a struggle that frequently corresponds to the stage in their lives when it makes the most sense to start a family.
Mothers who freelance in any of the crafts in film and television have a number of challenges to deal with: financial uncertainty, frequent travel to ever-changing locations, long and irregular hours, and complicated access to health care. They are likely to be union members, but union health care usually depends on the number of weeks worked per year, and getting pregnant, giving birth and handling the demands of a new child can cut into those totals.
Finding adequate childcare when the work is so variable is another conundrum. One director recently told me that her kids think she’s out of town when she’s just working. Once her first film was completed, she thought she’d be able to adopt a more rational schedule. She hadn’t factored in the need to spend months travelling the world on the festival circuit in order to capitalise on networking opportunities and find distribution.
The industry should be a leader in more parent-friendly practices. Studios frequently take a hit to their bottom line when celebrities make lavish demands, such as private jets, bodyguards and yachts. But as Zoe Saldana remarked, their response is different when it comes to childcare: ‘‘Nope, we don’t pay for nannies’’. Changing that attitude would show parents that the industry values their voices and their contributions to the workforce.
Mathilde Dratwa is a film director and founder of Moms-infilm. She wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.