Hollywood's Gender Equality, Written in Invisible Ink; Where Are the Women in Film and TV?
—The White House Project: Film and TV
- In film, women constitute 16 percent of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers; this represents a slight decrease in their representation in these positions in the last decade.
- Among situation comedies, dramas and reality shows in the 2008-09 prime-time television season, women made up one-quarter of all creators, directors, executive producers and producers.
- Women don’t do much better on screen: across 400 top-grossing G, PG, PG-13 and R rated films released between 1990 and 2006, only 27 percent of over 15,000 speaking characters were female. African American women constitute only 7 percent of characters featured in dramas and situation comedies, Latinas constitute two percent, and Asian women account for less than two percent.
- Women own less than 6 percent of the full-power television stations in the US
Posted at the White House Project site is a New York Times op-ed by By Kim Elsesser, a research scholar at the Center for Study of Women at the University of California, Los Angeles:
"Many hours into the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony this Sunday, the Oscar for best actor will go to Morgan Freeman, Jeff Bridges, George Clooney, Colin Firth or Jeremy Renner. Suppose, however, that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented separate honors for best white actor and best non-white actor, and that Mr. Freeman was prohibited from competing against the likes of Mr. Clooney and Mr. Bridges. Surely, the academy would be derided as intolerant and out of touch; public outcry would swiftly ensure that Oscar nominations never again fell along racial lines."
"Why, then, is it considered acceptable to segregate nominations by sex, offering different Oscars for best actor and best actress?"
"Since the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929, separate acting Oscars have been presented to men and women. Women at that time had only recently won the right to vote and were still several decades away from equal rights outside the voting booth, so perhaps it was reasonable to offer them their own acting awards. But in the 21st century women contend with men for titles ranging from the American president to the American Idol. Clearly, there is no reason to still segregate acting Oscars by sex."
"Perhaps the academy would argue that the separate awards guarantee equity, since men and women have received the exactly the same number of best acting Oscars. And the academy is not alone in this regard: the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, the British Academy of Film and the Independent Spirit Awards all split acting nominees by sex as well.
But separate is not equal. While it is certainly acceptable for sports competitions like the Olympics to have separate events for male and female athletes, the biological differences do not affect acting performances."
"2010 will be the 30th anniversary of the National Women’s History Project. When we began mobilizing the lobbying effort that resulted in President Carter issuing a Presidential Proclamation declaring the week of March 8, 1980 as the first National Women’s History Week, we had no idea what the future would bring. And then, in 1987, another of our successful lobbying efforts resulted in Congress expanding the week into a month, and March is now National Women’s History Month."
"The overarching theme for 2010 and our 30th Anniversary celebration is Writing Women Back into History. It often seems that the history of women is written in invisible ink. Even when recognized in their own times, women are frequently left out of the history books. To honor our 2010 theme, we are highlighting pivotal themes from previous years. Each of these past themes recognizes a different aspect of women’s achievements, from ecology to art, and from sports to politics."
