TV industry shocked at the news that they're not hiring women

Who knew? Oh yeah, they did. And women did.

The news shocked everyone. Well, apart from maybe the women. The women knew. The women know.

The news: the number of female writers and directors on British TV shows has fallen in the last six years. Yeah, those years when we were told, guaranteed, we were making progress! Let’s look at that progress shall we, ladies? Glass of fizz, babe?

-One in three directors are women, but they made 25.3% of director ‘contributions’ to British TV in 2021/2 (down from 26.9% six years ago). 32.4% of shows were written by woman, down from 42.8%

-30.2% of writers in comedy are women, 21.2% in entertainment

-The proportion of Black and brown writers on shows ‘hit a high’ of 15.6% in 2021/2 but immediately fell to 14% the following year

-Disabled writers contribution was 7.6% (writers) and 4.6% (directors)

-Writers over 50 saw it drop from 42.8% to 21.4%

Allow me to put it reductively: women are directors and writers, but they’re not fucking hired. Unlike say, men, who make up two-thirds of directors (66%), but do 76% of the work.

And this isn’t just a UK problem. A telly problem. The problem exists, has long existed, across behind the camera gigs (composers, cinematographers, editors too) in telly and film.

Panels, competitions and schemes can’t fix this. Not if there’s no willingness to hire or commission at the end of it. And especially if, in some cases, a public-facing ‘fix’, the reputational panacea, removes the imperative to do the actual thing. 

What is the actual thing? Hiring women. Because that’s the answer, the only possible answer.

Employ disabled women. Black and brown women. Working-class women. Queer women. Women over 50.

HIRE WOMEN.

Trust them with big budgets/IP/long-running shows/primetime shows

(Hire women)

Believe in their ability to tell, craft, someone else’s story - someone who maybe (wait for it) isn’t even a woman/a woman just like them

(Hire women)

Give them genre work

(Hire women)

Give them ambitious work

(Hire women)

Make more stuff in the regions

(Hire women)

Hire them to direct, then hire them again (that second elusive gig that’s not elusive to everyone now is it)

(Hire women)

Don’t insist they make that same thing over and over again

(Hire women)

Commission them. Greenlight their pitch

(Hire women)

Option their work

(Hire women)

Fund their ideas

(Hire women)

Don’t hang them out to dry, alone in the fucking wind, when the work doesn’t land like you hoped 

(Hire women)

Pay them properly

(Hire women)

Allow them to fail. And then hire them again

(Hire women)

If you’re a commissioner, work with production companies who are committed to equitable change

(Hire women)

If you’re a production company, work with commissioners who are committed to equitable change

(Hire women)

Work with producers who champion women and diverse stories (some of them live outside London. Steady yourself)

(Hire women)

Believe in challenging, unconventional, non-traditional scripts (you can pretend they’re men if that helps!)

(Hire women)

Be less concerned with notions of relatability and likeability (you can pretend they’re men if that helps!)

(Hire women)

Consider running sets that don’t operate 10+ hour days as a pretty short day actually why are you crying about wanting to see your kids/go to the pub/have a life?

(Hire women)

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD realise that “woman” isn’t a synonym for ‘risky as fuck” (and that risk can be, you know, GOOD)

(Hire women)

Believe that they can do the job

HIRE WOMEN HIRE WOMEN HIRE WOMEN HIRE WOMEN HIRE WOMEN

-

I often think about an interview I did with Patty Jenkins in 2020. Wonder Woman 1984 was being scored in London, she was flying high after the first instalment - 2017’s Wonder Woman, which she wrote and directed - had been a hit for a beleagured DCEU.

She had it good, right? A success story that women could hang their hopes on! Well, sure. But…

WW was Patty’s second film, coming out just the fourteen years after her first. She’d ended up $100,000 in debt after making (the Oscar-winning) Monster, spent years “living hand to mouth, pay cheque to pay cheque, rental to rental”. And as we sat watching Hans Zimmer score her $200million film, she told me that she still lived in a small rental house “because I’ve never made a dime until this movie”. She had been offered studio movies in those intervening years (while her own passion project was repeatedly turned down), and her argument for not accepting them is no-notes perfect - and absolutely crushingly relevant today.

“There were a lot of male-visioned versions of female films. My biggest complaint against Hollywood for a long time was: it’s not that you’re not trying to hire women, you need to involve us in what movies should be made in the first place. Because you’re not really interested in my point of view. You want me to walk around on set so you can take a picture of me, but you don’t actually trust in and believe in women-driven content being anything but tampon commercials. Like, there’s something they think is inherently soft about female filmmaking — which is changing.”

Would a male director have walked such a difficult road to a second film? After making a Monster? Everything I saw and heard and experienced in my six and a half years editing EMPIRE leads me to say: absolutely fucking not. Patty put it more eloquently.

“I think if somebody directed a movie like Monster who was a man, somebody would have financed their crazy second movie. But me it was like, “Hmm, no.” They were like, “Oh, we’d love to meet with Patty Jenkins,” but they didn’t want to read my script. They wanted me to direct something about a hooker with a heart of gold.”

Speak to enough female writers and directors working in film and telly and you’ll hear story after story, told in the same language. One that hasn’t changed, shows no sign of doing so.

Sorry, we already have one of those shows

It’s just a bit…niche

Oh, we already have a female writer in the room

You just don’t have enough credits I’m afraid - but come back when you manage to find people who are willing to give you the opportunity that we won’t!

Love it, love it, what do you think to someone else writing it?

Love it, love it, what do you think to someone else directing it?

Er, look at Sally Wainwright and Phoebe Waller-Bridge: what problem?

Would you like to be on our panel about why we need to hire more people like you even though we’d probably not hire you?

-

Glass of fizz, babe?