SAG Awards will feature only women presenters at 2018 ceremony

In a year where women have fought to have their voices heard, the Screen Actors Guild announced that in January the annual award ceremony will feature only female presenters for the first time in history, Entertainment Weekly announced.

Executive producer of the SAG Awards Kathy Connell said the idea was to “salute our women” in a year where they have been “very, very brave.”

“We thought it was an opportunity to salute our women because it’s not just about one issue,” she said, referencing how so many women — famous and not — came forward with their stories of sexual harassment and assault.

“Our women are very famous and yet they face the issues that women across this country do, which is they don’t have equality in income. They don’t have creative equality. And they have the same kind of safety issues that other women have been facing. We just thought we wanted to acknowledge as many wonderful women on our stage this year as we could, while we’re celebrating the best performances by women and men of the year,” Ms. Connell continued.

This year saw women in Hollywood help take down sexual harassment by first reporting the decades-long inappropriate behavior by Harvey Weinstein and a slew of other men quickly followed, including James Toback, Kevin Spacey, Russell Simmons, Matt Lauer, Ron Jeremy, Mario Batali, Jeremy Piven, Jeffrey Tambor and countless others.

But it wasn’t only famous faces who spoke out against the unfair treatment of women — thousands of women shared their stories with the #MeToo hashtag on social media.

Time Magazine named its “Person of the Year” as the whole “MeToo” movement — or the silence breakers — and Merriam Webster’s dictionary named “feminism” as its word of the year.

Ms. Connell said the idea came from a conversation with her daughter after attending the Women’s March in January.

Men will still appear on stage as they introduce the clips for nominees in the film ensemble category and, of course, there are still male nominees.

The 54th annual SAG Awards will take place on Jan. 21, with Kristen Bell as the first-ever host.

“Three Billboards,” “Lady Bird,” “Big Little Lies” and “Stranger Things” were among the leaders of this year’s nominees, which were announced on Wednesday.