The ACLU requests a federal investigation into Hollywood’s gender bias
Earlier today, the ACLU of Southern California and the national ACLU Women’s Rights Project reached out to state and national agencies to request an investigation into what they deemed the “systemic failure” to hire women directors in the film and television industry. The two groups sent a fifteen-page letter to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that included extensive statistical and anecdotal evidence on the “dramatic disparities” in the hiring of women directors. The complete letter has been published on The New York Times’ movie blog.
The civil rights organizations are asking for an in-depth probe into the “dramatic disparities” in the hiring of women directors for episodic television and feature films. They cite the fact that women made up only 7 percent of the directors of the top 250 grossing films (down from 9 percent in 1998) of 2014, and only 1.9 percent of directors for the top 100 grossing films in 2013 and 2014. Overall, women directors helmed only 4.1 percent of the 1300 top-grossing films from 2002-2014. Television remains almost as impermeable—a DGA analysis cited inThe New York Times of about 220 shows (comprising 3500 episodes) from 2013-2014 found that only 14 percent of directors were women.