REPORT REVEALS WIDENING GENDER GAP AMONG UK TV DIRECTORS
Directors UK is campaigning to improve access, training and opportunities for women directors working in UK television production.
Our latest gender inequality report, launched in August 2018, reveals that despite making up 51% of the population, only one in four television episodes are directed by women. The report looks at television output from 2013-2016 and reveals that the gender gap has increased across all four of the main UK broadcasters: BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 – despite their public commitment to improving gender equality.
Alarmed by this discovery, we are stepping up our campaign by calling for equality targets to be set and tracked through mandatory monitoring, and for broadcasters to commit 0.25% of their commissioning spend for all programme making to fund career development and industry access schemes.
- Television episodes directed by women fell by 2.98 percentage points between 2013 and 2016.
- Only one in four television programmes directed by a woman.
- No broadcaster surveyed improved their percentage of episodes directed by women over the four-year period.
Directors UK is calling for broadcasters to commit 0.25% of their commissioning spend for all programme making to fund career development and industry access schemes to close the gender gap, in response to research revealing a drop in the number of women directors working in UK television.
The recommendation comes from a new report from Directors UK, Who’s Calling the Shots? A Report on Gender Inequality among Screen Directors working in UK Television, which looks at gender inequality in directorial roles across the four main UK broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5). The research found:
- All broadcasters showed a decline in the percentage of episodes directed by women between 2013 and 2016.
- A decline of 2.98 percentage points in the share of television episodes directed by women (from 27.29% to 24.31%).
- Only 25% of episodes broadcast were directed by women.
- Factual programming showed the most significant decrease, by 9.8 percentage points. Children’s programming came second with a 4.5 percentage point decline.
- On the positive side, Multi-camera & Entertainment increased by 2.8 percentage points and Drama & Comedy showed an increase of 4.3 percentage points. These are two areas where there have been targeted career development initiatives for women directors delivered by Directors UK in partnership with Creative Skillset.
The report revealed that despite the publication of the broadcasters’ diversity and inclusion strategies and the introduction of equality monitoring through Project Diamond, run by the Creative Diversity Network, the gender gap increased across all four channels. Channel 4 saw a 5.4 percentage point decline in the number of episodes directed by women between 2013 and 2016, while Channel 5 experienced a 2.9 percentage point drop. In the same period, BBC and ITV saw a 1.8 and 1.5 percentage point decline respectively.
Furthermore, following the launch of Directors UK’s first report in 2014, the professional association began working with broadcasters to place women directors in on-set career development placements within Continuing Drama (soaps). The latest research reveals that, since then, Continuing Drama has experienced a 7.3 percentage point increase.
These results suggest that positive interventions do help to address inequality and, as a result, Directors UK is calling for wider-reaching placement schemes to be implemented across all genres of programme making.
Directors UK is now proposing a number of recommendations within the report to help improve equality, transparency and accountability:
- Broadcasters to commit 0.25% of their commissioning spend across all programme making as a levy to fund industry access and career development schemes for underrepresented groups.
- Ofcom to make it mandatory for all UK broadcasters to monitor and publicly report their diversity characteristics of all those making programmes for them, to include freelancers as well as permanent staff. And for broadcasters to monitor and publish the equality data of senior production roles such as producers, writers and directors as well as the heads of departments
- Ofcom to set broadcasters targets to use production crews whose gender, ethnic and disability makeup mirrors that of the UK population, both in front of and behind the camera, by 2020.
- Hirers to commit to fairer recruitment practices in line with other industries to improve equal access to opportunities for all; in particular, externally advertising roles, the introduction of written references for freelance production staff and a requirement for women to make up 50% of those being interviewed for senior production roles.
Directors UK Board member and factual director, Toral Dixit (Dispatches, World's Greatest Bridges, What do Artists Do All Day, Mammoth – Back from the Dead), commented: “It is not acceptable that women make up one third of working directors in the UK but only direct one in four television programmes. To generate a shift towards gender equality, broadcasters must embrace positive interventions across all genres and deliver fair and transparent hiring practices for both freelancers and staff. Targets must be set and tracked through mandatory monitoring so successes can be built on and replicated across the industry.”
Directors UK CEO Andrew Chowns added: “While the overall decline is very disappointing, results in Continuing Drama show that collaborative interventions made in partnership with broadcasters and production partners do work to unlock new opportunities for women directors by developing skills and building expertise. These workplace initiatives must now become more widely available, so we are asking broadcasters to commit 0.25% of their commissioning spend across all programmes to fund industry access and career development schemes for underrepresented groups.”
A PDF copy of the full report Who’s Calling the Shots: A Report on Gender Inequality among Screen Directors working in UK Television and further information can be found at directors.uk.com/campaigns/gender-equality-in-uk-tv.
The report uses data from 47,444 episodes of UK-commissioned television programmes broadcast on the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 between 2013 and 2016.
In 2014, Directors UK issued its first report on female directorial representation in UK television production Women Directors - Who’s Calling the Shots? It highlighted the challenges facing women directors revealing that only 27% of the directing workforce across all genres were women and explored each genre in more depth.