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THE

INVISIBLE WOMAN

By Beryl Richards Director, Vice Chair Directors UK, Chair DUK Women’s Working Group

For the past two years as Chair of the Women’s Working Group at Directors UK, I’ve been immersed in the cold hard reality of the lack of women directing in Britain, and I’ve seen how it’s getting worse.

A few women on the board of DUK set up the working group as we thought there was a problem, as we could see few other women directors on programme credits. As a residuals collecting society we hold extensive data on all UK directors and the films and TV they have made. We realised that by doing a gender split across our data we could track the patterns of employment and chart any changes. We took a slice across the data that looked at programmes made by the BBC, ITV and the 6 large independent companies. What we found was worse than we expected, and showed a significant downward trend in the last two years. And it showed patterns of behaviour – such as a number of ‘fast track’ drama shows where producers look for new talent hiring only young men – or that women were well represented in factual TV, but largely directing shows on body image or domestic concerns rather than science and technology. There seemed to be very old-fashioned attitudes in play, surprising in an industry that sees itself as forward looking. It was a problem beyond the tastes of a few individuals, and seemed ingrained in the way the system of hiring directors works.

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I started out thinking that there seemed to be fewer women, and in order to change things we just ne-eded to make producers a bit more aware of this. I’ve ended up in a very different place - thinking the only way anything will change is by setting targets, which are monitored, measured and delivered to a set timeframe.

There is more detail in our report. We analysed over 28,000 episodes of 142 long running and popular shows across many areas of TV over a ten year period. The results are to be found in the report “Women Directors – Who’s Calling the Shots?”, Summary: http://www.directors.uk.com/about-us/news/whos-calling-the-shots

Link to whole report: http://creativediversitynetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/women-directors-whos-calling-the-shots.pdf

As most Directors UK members, who make films or TV, come up through TV, and TV is the biggest employer, we chose to focus on the TV industry. A recent report published by the British Film Institute shows much the same patterns in film. Link: http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/downloads/bfi-report-on-female-writers-and-directors-of-uk-films-2013-11.pdf

Our report is making waves, and will continue to do so, as we will publish figures every year to chart and report back progress. It was covered in the press and on radio, and at Cannes. It has been picked up as a model by women’s groups formed in FERA (European Federation of Film Directors) and CISAC (The World Federation of Collecting Societies) which also represents theatre, dance, music, as well as film and TV.

From my recent discussions with international colleagues the patterns we found seem very similar in other European countries. But our figures show that in the UK at least, things are getting worse. There’s a downward trend in much of drama, comedy and entertainment. A snapshot looks like this: Drama series and serials are down from 15% to 11%; crime/detective shows are down from 12% to 9%; science fiction is down from 4% to 0%. In fact, many popular drama, entertainment, and comedy shows have never been directed by a woman.

In drama in the UK it is very competitive to get in, even at entry level, but even harder if you’re female – only 14% of soaps are directed by women. But what happens next is even more of a block. I feel particularly passionate about the lack of women directing the types of programmes that act as a career fast-track to the bigger budget, higher-end productions. Here is where emerging talent is scouted by many producers, looking for a director to follow on from bigger name lead director. And we need more women to be getting these opportunities. Instead many women director members report that their CV’s are described negatively as eclectic or unfocussed. Because they have no access to ‘hot credits’, they are having to move sideways.

In drama, we are talking about TV episodes of genre shows Misfits or Being Human, which have had no female directors on them up to 2012. Or Skins – which started off with 26% then dropped to 0% by 2013. They are sci-fi, action and zeitgeisty series. Without the visibility that these “fast track” programmes offer, it is harder to make the step up to the next level.

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Some Key Facts to be found in the report “Women Directors – Who’s Calling the Shots?”

We want 30% of all programmes produced in 2017 to be directed by women.

A large number of the UK’s leading drama, entertainment and comedy pro-grammes have never had a woman director across the entire run.

The (already low) number of women working in drama has decreased in recent years: women are increasingly less likely to be working on drama series and serials.

Women leave directing at an earlier stage in their careers, and in larger numbers than their male counterparts.

Broadcasters and production companies were shocked to learn of our find-ings: they didn’t know as there has not been a consistent and systematic monitoring of freelance staff within broadcast and production companies.

13%ONLY

13%ONLY

11%

OF ALL DRAMA EPISODES WERE DIRECTED BY WOMEN IN 2011 AND 2012; DOWN FROM 14% IN THE TOTAL SAMPLE.

0%OF SCI-FI/FANTASY GENRE DRAMA EPISODES WERE DIRECTED BY WOMEN IN

2011 AND 2012DOWN FROM 4% OF THE

TOTAL SAMPLE

OF ALL DRAMA SERIES AND SERIAL EPISODES WERE DIRECTED BY WOMEN IN 2011 AND 2012; DOWN FROM 15%IN THE TOTAL SAMPLE.

0% OF WOMEN DIRECTORS HAVE EVER WORKED ON MANY POPULAR DRAMAS AND ENTERTAINMENT SHOWS

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13%ONLY

13%ONLY

11%

OF ALL DRAMA EPISODES WERE DIRECTED BY WOMEN IN 2011 AND 2012; DOWN FROM 14% IN THE TOTAL SAMPLE.

0%OF SCI-FI/FANTASY GENRE DRAMA EPISODES WERE DIRECTED BY WOMEN IN

2011 AND 2012DOWN FROM 4% OF THE

TOTAL SAMPLE

OF ALL DRAMA SERIES AND SERIAL EPISODES WERE DIRECTED BY WOMEN IN 2011 AND 2012; DOWN FROM 15%IN THE TOTAL SAMPLE.

0% OF WOMEN DIRECTORS HAVE EVER WORKED ON MANY POPULAR DRAMAS AND ENTERTAINMENT SHOWS

In 2006 a group of leading film and television directors got together to discuss the challenges facing their industry, and the need to improve working conditions, fees and remuneration for directors in the UK. Over the next two years this group worked closely with the Board of DPRS to create the current organisation - Direc-tors UK, which was launched in June 2008. Directors UK currently holds arround 5.000 mebers.

- See more at: http://www.directors.uk.com/about-us#sthash.KGRP9i5G.dpuf

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In Children’s TV programming, where our survey shows only 9% of drama is directed by women, drama series such as the Sarah Jane Adventures, M.I. High or Wolfblood can also be helpful genre credits (again sci-fi and action) for directors wanting to move into adult drama – again, no women directors.

In factual TV, there’s 50/50 split bet-ween male and female directors. That looks great, but when you look more closely at what women are allowed to direct….. on formatted shows it’s often body image, food and lifestyle. Whilst it’s great that women do have jobs that can give them valuable experience, it seems hard for them to get work on science, driving, or technology shows. This also suggests a level of gender stereotyping. What concerns our members is that this work won’t give a director the skills and experience needed to go on and make the bigger, single documentaries. A format where you can really tell a story with your own singular vision – a career aspiration for many factual directors.

At the Directors UK we kept our report confidential for a year before we published it. During this year we had private meetings at high level within the broadcasters/companies, in order to see what they thought of the figures we had collected. There were clear patterns to their responses.

All were shocked by our findings, they had no idea the numbers were so low, they hadn’t noticed in the day to day work life at the TV station or independent television production companies. In many offices they pointed out how many women there were in executive producer and management roles. There was the perception of a ‘job done’. But when we talked further, it was clear that there were very few wo-men directors that they actually knew of. They couldn’t name or remember any other female directors. There were a trusted few 5-6 women directors in drama or comedy who were often sought out for jobs. If they were not available, the job went to a man. Or as many executives said “the best person for the job”, a phrase we heard many times. Often mentoring or a training course was suggested as a remedy. There is little evidence this approach has had any meaningful effect, and certainly seems inadequate

Beryl Richards is a BAFTA winning director and chairs the Women’s Working Group at Directors UK

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as a measure when discussing such a huge disparity.

There was an assumption that directing was incompatible with childcare and that’s why there were hardly any women. The women directors around the table, including a number of the ‘trusted few’ corrected them on this. Most of us have had children. We have managed this transition, and worked in all areas of film and TV. In Di-rectors UK membership level of women directors is 27% - of professionally qualified highly skilled women. The largest area of our female membership is 35 to 44 years old. There are plenty of us out there.

It became increasingly clear that the directors and the executives in charge of hiring directors are living in two separate worlds. Almost all directors are freelance. Everyone we spoke to at senior level has secure full time employment with benefits such as paid maternity/paternity leave, pensions and holidays. Often their compa-nies have strong equal opportunities and diversity policies of which they are rightly proud. But these policies don’t apply to the majority of the workforce who are freelance – 55% in TV and 91% in film. Freelancers are invisible in their company plans, their policies do not apply to us. Statistics are not collected for freelance employees, so there is no monitoring, so we do not exist.

On top of this, in the TV world there is a really significant shift of power to commissioning level and this has re-sulted in risk adverse behaviour. Decisions on directors that were once taken at producer level are now subject to commissioner approval. Commissioners do not take a meeting with the director, they look at CVs instead. Commissioning editors are not talent scouts, and our figures show the same directors being hired again and again. At commissioning level very few women directors are known.

So what is the solution? During the course of this study it became clear to me that just to alert producers to the situation was not going to change anything – their hands are tied, commissioners want known name directors, and almost all of these are men. Our data shows the system is clearly weighted in favour of male directors, so it seems the system is what we need to address. The easiest way to halt further decline is to monitor and set management targets so that the issue gains visibility.

Our main recommendation is that broadcasters and broadcast commissioners adopt a management target of a minimum of 30% of directing work to go to women directors in all genres by 2017. To keep check on this we have suggested that production companies are contractually obliged to monitor the gender of their freelance workforce and report this back to broadcasters. There are a number of other suggestions, but they all build on this basic core concept. We are about to embark on another round of private meetings with these new ideas.

I look forward to the response.

Twitter: @berylrdirector website: www.berylrichards.com