Women in Theatre
Executive Summary
The "WIT" Report was commissioned in July 2011 by Australia Council for the Arts to "bring the research of women in creative leadership in Australia up to present day, and provide a basis for the sector to discuss" the findings and "reach some agreement on some strategies to address the situation( " 4). It also presents "quantitative and qualitative information on the continuing gender disparities" and identifies "structural barriers and potential levers for addressing entrenched inequities (4).
Some Findings: Analysis of Major Theatre Performing Arts companies (MPA's) revealed a "significant variability of women as playwrights/writers and directors from year to year." The study notes a pattern of good years v. bad years for women. MPA companies show "30% - 40% of productions have a woman in a creative leadership role" with the proportion lower than 30% in 2008 and 2010. Analysis of Theatre Board Key Organisations (TBKO's) shows that there is a significantly higher representation of women in key creative roles of writer/playwright and director," TBKO's are not "gender-neutral." While 52% of productions have "at least one woman in a key creative role," it was observed that female writers are "somewhat more likely" to be paired with female directors (4).
The report states that in both kinds of companies, there appears that no progress towards equality has been made "over the decade since 2001" and that there is "evidence that the situation for women in creative leadership" deteriorated during that time (5).
Anti-discrimination and affirmative action policies in place for years have not led to significant progress, thus the report rightly assumes that there are "no simple solutions to the disparities" or that policies put in place in the past will "create significant inroads" w/r/t the problem.
Three issues need to be addressed:
- the perception gap on the current state of parity
- the need to balance family and career commitments
- the lack of sustained organizational commitment and action
- Information - suggests a systematic approach to quantifying progress - a score card approach to track and monitor advances made in each sector (MPA's & TBKO's I'm presuming).
- Accountability - companies adherence to "best practice gender parity objectives" as set by company boards and senior management and included as part of each year's annual report.
- Vigilance- Individuals take responsibility for the integrity of their decision-making process and of those around them.
Those interviewed acknowledge the presence of gender inequality, but also emphasized that "disparities in opportunities and appointments" are even more slight for members of other "culturally diverse categories."
The review discusses equal opportunity strategies developed within larger subsidized arts organizations beginning in 1984 including making gender equity part of the criteria for assessing grant applications and requiring major orgs to include a report in their annual grant application on their progress towards equal opportunity. Strategies continued to be pursued through the 1990s, but findings indicate that the issue of gender equality lost ground as a policy priority in the arts until December 2009. The announcement of Company B Belvoir's 2010 season and the accompanying and picture of the playwrights - 1 woman and 11 men - caused a "storm in the media and blogosphere" (15). Note: You can read more about the Company B Belvoir story here, here, here, and here.
Women directors and playwrights mobilized in response to the Company B Belvoir controversy forming the Australian Women Directors Alliance and Australian Women Playwrights Online. Women theater makers also launched a series of events to discuss and debate the issues including a lecture panel, forums and roundtables for Directors and playwrights, and the commissioning of the current report.
Me here. Editorializing.
There's no reason these sorts of things couldn't happen here in the U.S. given the profile of the Guthrie season and Joe Dowling's response. It's great that #2amt was hopping today with discussion, but it would be nice to see action taken locally and nationally. The study acknowledges social networking as a tool for bringing attention to important issues, it's also right in pointing out that high profile issues can vanish when another hot button topic comes along. The Internet gives "the illusion that something is being done about an issue" because people are debating, but the discussion could be "masking the continuation of the status quo" (42).
And back to the study...
Perspectives from the Field
The study interviewed 44 people including playwrights, artistic directors, directors, dramaturgs, producers, an academic, a blogger, a designer, and a member of the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA). Their responses comprise the bulk of the study.
- The boy's club definitely exists.
- Men have more access to informal mentoring than women.
- Media romanticize and mythologize certain names and a certain level of media regard is needed for companies to feel confident that audiences will support the productions. (This becomes a self-perpetuating model of promotion.)
- There is popular perception in the arts and in the popular imagination that only men, not women can be 'geniuses.'
- Women's work isn't seen to generate the same kind of buzz that young men's work does.
- Women directors aren't taken seriously until they're over 35.
- Middle-aged women find it hard to get work because the makers, media and audiences are enthralled by the new. New = young.
- Difficult to get away from gender-based generalizations w/r/t the kind of work men and women make, how makers present themselves, leadership styles, etc.
- These generalizations are sometimes used to rationalize the perpetuation of gender differences.
- Barrier to women's career success often due to difficulty finding enough work to build a track record early in their career and to create a sustainable level of momentum towards career success.
- Freelance work is a young person's game.
- Women over-represented in supportive, nurturing, behind-the-scenes roles - ie. stage managers.
- Difficult to have a work/life balance.
- You have to keep working. Intensive creative model is favored over other creative modes, such as longer term gestation.
- Have to stay visible and keep the momentum going. Women's career unavoidably interrupted when they have children. Perception that if you stop and have children, you'll have to start all over again.
- It's difficult for both men and women with over 10 years in their field to balance work and family life. "Theatre is inherently unfriendly to families."
- Because employment for both men and women is scarce, people with children aren't likely to speak up if they need more support than artists without children.
- Women reluctant to even discuss their families because it might be a disadvantage to their careers.
I'm including a link to Writ Large, a study conducted by the Arts Council of England that looks at new writing between 2003 and 2009 and cited in the WIT study. Writ Large notes that the "increased prominence of women's writing since the 1980's has not been sustained" and that part of the issue may be the "critical hostility to women's writing often evidenced in the press" (qtd in WIT 31).
What needs to Change?
- More development opportunities and mentoring
- Find balance between nurturing early career artists and supporting mid-career artists. Early development is wasted without follow through in later years.
- Playwrights need opportunities to travel and see work overseas.
- Perception that in the past there were more residencies, commissions, and informal salons.
- More Associate Director positions to develop next generation of Artistic Directors.
- Family friendly work practices.
- Status quo is positively enforced daily, so we need to fight our socialization. Men have no vested interest in doing that, although the study found examples of men whose values and behavior did reflect a responsibility w/r/t equity.
- Diversity is the real issue. Opportunities are scarce for women, but are even more so for members of other equity target groups. The findings are pretty grim here. The idea being that if women can't get parity, there is little hope in addressing other forms of social and cultural discrimination.
This section cites a survey of over 1200 members of the Australian business community concerning attitudes about gender parity. Three issues continue to play a role in establishing gender parity.
- Perception gaps w/r/t the current state of gender parity make it difficult to address the disparity. Men were also twice as likely as women to feel that women had an equal chance for promotion to senior leadership roles. 48% of the men interviewed agreed that achieving gender parity should be a priority. Since men are more likely to be in key decision making roles, it's harder for organizations to effectively address gender disparities.
- Balancing family and career. Women are more likely to support their partner's career by working from home, relocating, or turning down job opportunities. Women are twice as likely to follow a flexible career path or take a leave of absence. They are three times more likely to work part time.
- Organizations need to show sustained commitment and action on gender parity.
I'm only including a partial list.
- Visible monitoring of progress in gender diversity programs by CEO & executive team.
- Skill-building programs aimed directly at women
- Addressing indicators of a company's performance in hiring, retaining and promoting women.
- Support programs and facilities to help balance work and family life.
Again, this is only a partial list.
- Gender quotas in hiring, retaining, promoting or developing women.
- Requirements for at least one female candidate to be in each promotion pool.
- Programs to encourage female networking and role models.
- Information. Establishing a systematic approach to compiling gender parity indicators so progress can be monitored and tracked. Developing information and research alliances - networks of people interested in promoting the issue of women and creative leadership. A way to share information and research, including a way of standardizing how data is collected so a reliable information base can be maintained.
- Accountability. In Australia, there is pressure on large corporations to address gender diversity and there is belief this will provide impetus for theater orgs to do the same. There are also policies in place via governance boards and the Australian Securities Exchange that require corps to adopt and disclose their diversity policy. The policy must demonstrate measurable objectives w/r/t gender and corps are required to disclose this information in their annual reports. The study asks if this level of accountability is required in the corporate world, why shouldn't it be required in the theater sector?
- Vigilance. The study advocates for examining why "the ideologies that situate the white, abled, middle class male as the normative consciousness and casts everyone else as Other." Many of the women interviewed felt that there needed to be "an active process exploration and dialogue." Since we all have unconscious biases and assumptions, it's the responsibility of individuals to become aware of and to examine their own set of biases and how they operate in the world.
