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Featured Guest: Martha Lauzen is the Executive Director and founder of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, whose research has inspired an investigation into industry hiring practices. A professor of film and television at San Diego State University, her research and publications have been widely discussed and republished in an effort to shine light on gender discrimination in Hollywood. We talked to her about her renowned Celluloid Ceiling and Boxed In reports with a focus on women writers.
Yes, in 2022, women comprised 19% of writers working on the top 250 domestic grossing films, according to the latest Celluloid Ceiling report. This is even with the percentage achieved in 2019, and it represents an increase of 6 percentage points from 13% in 1998. 70% of the films had no women writers. Considering the top 100 films, women accounted for 17% of writers in 2022. This represents a decline of 3 percentage points from 20% in 2019 but an increase of 7 percentage points from 10% in 1980. I prefer the larger sample as it is more inclusive and less subject to fluctuations due to small changes in the numbers. The findings suggest that while the percentages of women writing for film have increased over time, women remain dramatically underrepresented in this role.
And what about the statistics for television and streaming? Women who write tend to fare better in television than in film, as do women in other key behind-the-scenes roles. According to the latest Boxed In study, women made up 36% of writers working on broadcast network programs (ABC, CBS, CW, FOX, NBC). This figure is even with the 36% achieved in 2019-20, but it is just one percentage point above the 35% achieved in 2006-07. Women comprised 30% of writers working on original programs from the major streamers (Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock). This represents a decline of 11 percentage points from the historical high of 41% in 2019-20. However, it represents an increase of 3 percentage points from 27% in 2017-18. Women accounted for 33% of writers working on broadcast and streaming programs in 2021-22.
Where can readers find these figures? The Celluloid Ceiling and Boxed In studies are available on the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film's website: http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu.
Why are you so passionate about this topic? When I started conducting this research twenty-five years ago, I kept hearing that the environment for women in Hollywood was improving. However, the credits did not appear to reflect such a shift, so I started tracking women's on-screen and behind-the-scenes representation in film and television. At the time, the public discussion of women's employment was largely confined to an occasional article in the Los Angeles Times or "special issues" of the trades timed to coincide with special events sponsored by women's groups. Many of these articles were based on the anecdotal stories of a few successful women and, while perhaps well-intentioned, were quite misleading. At one point, the then-editor of Variety, Peter Bart, wrote an article about how there was no celluloid ceiling for women working in the entertainment industries. I thought it was very important to have a record of women's employment in key behind-the-scenes roles, including as screenwriters. The numbers have grounded the discussion of the issue in some verifiable reality, and their release has provided visibility for the issue. All of the statistics in my studies are independent of any industry influence. We also know that in order to understand portrayals of characters on screen, we need to know who is working behind the scenes. People tend to create what they know. Having lived their lives as males, men tend to foreground the stories of men. Having lives their lives as females, women tend to create stories about women. While there are exceptions, the analysis of thousands of characters and individuals working behind the scenes confirms this relationship. If the ratios of those working behind the scenes are heavily skewed to favor males, that imbalance will be reflected in on-screen representations.
What is the major obstacle to change? In a nutshell, there has simply been little real will to change on the part of those in leadership positions in the film and television industries. As a result, there has been no coordinated effort to change the environment for women working in behind-the-scenes positions, such as writers. Women's underemployment is an industry-wide problem in need of an industry-wide solution. At this point, it seems unlikely that widespread change will occur without intervention from an external entity such as the EEOC. Based on a number of formal and informal surveys I have conducted of women's representation in the top film and television programs around the country, this is not a pipeline problem. Females comprise from approximately one-third to more than half of the students in those programs. Women are interested in working for television and film, they simply aren't being hired in numbers that are consistent with the talent pool available. There is also a perception that women can only write stories about women. These have not been considered to be universal stories but rather as narratives that appeal almost exclusively to the "niche" of women moviegoers. The lion's share of industry and press attention has focused on the underemployment of women working as directors. We should expand the discussion of women's underrepresentation to include women working in other roles including as screenwriters, cinematographers, editors, and composers. In 2022, women accounted for only 21% of editors, 7% of cinematographers, and 8% of composers, according to the latest Celluloid Ceiling study.
Do you see any positives? In both film and television, my research has consistently found that when a film or television program has at least one woman in a gatekeeping role -- a position that enables them to hire other individuals -- that film or television program is more likely to employ women as writers, editors, and cinematographers. For example, on television programs with at least one woman creator, women comprised 49% of writers. On programs with exclusively male creators, women accounted for 24% of writers, according to the latest Boxed In study of 2021-22. As the percentages of women directors in film as well as creators and executive producers in fim and television rise, the research indicates that the percentages of women writers will also increase.
Leslie Kreiner Wilson, Interviewer and Editor https://americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/spring_2023/lauzen.htm
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