Hollywood watershed moment

Women speak out

WOMEN working in Hollywood should seize upon the global outrage sparked by the Harvey Weinstein scandal to demand gender equality in the film industry.

So said female actors, producers and directors at an awards ceremony in Britain.

More than 50 women have said US movie producer Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them over the past three decades. Weinstein has denied having non-consensual sex with anyone.

The allegations, which surfaced last month, spurred millions of women worldwide to share experiences of being abused, groped and raped, flooding social media with the hashtag #MeToo.

Amid this groundswell and accusations against Weinstein from high-profile actresses such as Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow, the scandal may prove to be a watershed moment for women working in film, female producers and directors said.

“Women have said: ‘Enough is enough, our voices matter, and we should be at the highest levels of the film business,’” said Melissa Silverstein, the founder of Women and Hollywood, which advocates for gender equality in the global film industry.

“The revolution is here, and women will no longer be kept at bay,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at an awards ceremony in London to mark the initiative’s 10th anniversary. Producer Elizabeth Karlsen, whose films include Carol and Made in Dagenham, and director Gurinder Chadha, who won fame for Bend it Like Beckham, were among the women celebrated in London, following similar events in New York and Los Angeles last month.

“We must make something positive of the Weinstein scandal,” Chadha said.

“More and more brave women are speaking out against harassment and asking what will we do next? How are we going to channel that outpouring of truth and anger and move forward?”

Speaking at the event, actors, directors and producers bemoaned a lack of women in the global film industry and poor representation of female characters.

Of the top 100 grossing films last year, women accounted for only a fifth of producers, a tenth of writers and fewer than one in 20 directors, according to data from the US-based Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film.

In British films, women are cast in less than a third of roles, often in nameless parts such as prostitute and housekeeper, with no gains in a century, the British Film Institute says.

Yet the momentum generated by women after the allegations against Weinstein offered hope, Karlsen said.

“Women are speaking out and, more important, they’re being listened to,” the British producer said.

“Patriarchal power structures harbouring abuse are crumbling, and women are marching into the spaces opening up.”

‘Patriarchal structures harbouring abuse are crumbling’