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Entertainment Industry Fails Its Promise to Women

The Directors Guild of America (DGA) reports that the entertainment industry has not kept its promise to hire more women and minorities for directing jobs. Despite promises from entertainment industry employers, the job rate for women directors actually dropped in 1999. Women film directors accounted for 7.4 percent of total days worked by guild directors in 1999, down from 8.5 percent in 1998. Philanthropist and producer Peg Yorkin, chair of the Feminist Majority Foundation and leading feminist within the Los Angeles entertainment community, is not surprised. “The DGA has been putting out numbers like this for more than 10 years, and all women ever get is more numbers – no changes.” The bottom line? “It’s a boy’s club,” Yorkin asserts. “The entertainment industry continues to produce films saturated with sex and violence that are aimed at 14-year-old boys, the so-called target audience for money-making pictures.”

The entertainment industry has been the target of criticism from minority groups as well. For example, the NAACP recently began a campaign to increase representation of blacks and other minorities in television.

Sources:

Washington Post - December 7, 2000

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