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Cersei Lannister on the Iron Throne.
Cersei Lannister on the Iron Throne. Photograph: Uncredited/AP
Cersei Lannister on the Iron Throne. Photograph: Uncredited/AP

Women reign on Emmy favorites, but few are involved in making them

This article is more than 7 years old

Sunday’s Emmy awards will celebrate an art form in its creative golden age, but behind the lens the industry looks nothing like the world we see on TV

Cersei Lannister may have taken her seat on the Iron Throne, but in the real world of Game of Thrones, which has been nominated for 23 Emmy awards for its sixth season, not a single woman has occupied the director’s chair for years.

Sunday’s Emmy awards will celebrate an art form that is in a creative golden age, breaking artistic and societal boundaries with shows that increasingly reflect the diversity of America. With nominations for TV shows such as Black-ish, Transparent, Master of None and The People v OJ Simpson, the Emmys will be far and away more diverse than this year’s much-criticized Oscars.

But behind the camera, the industry that produces the shows we love looks nothing like the world we see reflected on the screen. The television industry remains a man’s world.

The Guardian analyzed the gender diversity of four important behind-the-scenes roles on the latest seasons of the shows nominated for Best Drama, Best Comedy and Best Limited Series: director, writer, cinematographer, and editor. The results paint a bleak picture of gender diversity in the workplaces that give rise to one of our country’s key cultural products.

Women directed just 30.4% of episodes and earned just 23.2% of writing credits, 7.1% of cinematography credits and 34.3% of editing credits for the nominated shows. Roots and The People v OJ Simpson did not have a single female director.

Two shows – the top-nominated Game of Thrones and critical darling Fargo – had neither a female director nor a female writer on their most recent seasons. Indeed, Game of Thrones has not had a female director since season four or a female writer since season three.

Over two seasons, Fargo has exclusively employed male directors and writers.

On the brighter side, four shows (The Night Manager, Transparent, American Crime and Modern Family) had female directors for 50% or more of their episodes. Transparent, Black-ish, Master of None and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt had women for 40% or more of their writing credits.

female filmakers


‘The show-runner rules’

As dismal as these statistics are for the Emmy nominees, they are in line with the rest of the television industry. According to the unions for directors and screenwriters, women directed 17.1% of television episodes in the 2015-2016 season and accounted for 28.7% of employment on TV shows.

These massive disparities have drawn the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union of southern California, which has been campaigning to investigate discriminatory practices in the film and television industry.

In May, the Los Angeles Times reported that the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating gender discrimination in the industry. If the EEOC finds evidence of systemic discrimination, it could file commissioner’s charges against major studios, potentially leading to lawsuits.

“There is clearly major discrimination going on in a major industry, and the discrimination that is happening is fueling gender bias,” said Melissa Goodman, director of the LGBTQ, Gender and Reproductive Justice Project at the ACLU of southern California.

“At the end of the day, the culture is, ‘The show-runner rules’,” she said. “While the studios might ‘care’ about diversity, they don’t actually use their power to ensure that diversity is enforced. If the studios and networks actually decided that this was a priority, and imposed some kind of consequences, change would happen.”

‘Wow, that’s brutal’

Most articles about the lack of diversity in a given industry focus on the voices of people who are excluded. When we began reporting this article, our instinct was to interview women in television and ask them what it was like to work in an industry so dominated by men.

But during the first interview, a director pointed out that she finds it frustrating that reporters almost exclusively interviewed her about “being a woman in Hollywood” rather than about her work itself.

So we decided to flip the script and ask television show-runners why they were not hiring any women.

“Wow, that’s brutal,” was the response of Silicon Valley co-show-runner Alec Berg, when he was asked about his show’s gender diversity statistics (20% of director, 5% of writer, 0% of cinematography, and 0% of editing credits). “I guess the pool of people that get hired come out of the pool of people that have been hired. I think it’s a self-perpetuating machine.”

The women of Game of Thrones. Photograph: HBO

“We’re constantly making an effort to hire more women and more people of color,” he added. “I think our statistics, as dismal as you make them seem, are probably better than a lot of shows.” (In fact, they are worse than the average for the nominated shows.)

Berg also pointed out that he and co-show-runner Mike Judge direct “an outsize proportion of the shows”, leaving fewer opportunities for women to direct.

Peter Gould, co-show-runner of Better Call Saul, responded defensively to questions about his show’s hiring of women (10% of director credits, 28.3% of writer credits, 0% of cinematographer credits and 50% of editing credits).

“Literally half of our editors are women,” he said, naming Kelley Dixon. “I’ve just walked out of a writers room where more than half of the writers are women. I don’t know if I have more to say about it than that.”

When pressed on Better Call Saul’s lack of female directors, Gould said that it was difficult to book women to direct the show because everyone was trying to hire the same ones.

“It’s a very interesting situation,” he said. “Everyone in the business is currently thinking about this issue, so there’s tremendous competition for women directors.”

But Michael J McDonald, executive producer of American Crime, rejected the premise that gender diversity is difficult to achieve in television. American Crime had 50% female director credits, 22.2% female writer credits, 100% female cinematographer credits and 60% female editor credits for its second season.

Despite the imbalance in the writing credits, McDonald said the writing staff includes five women and four men, and that for its next season, six of eight episodes will be directed by women.

“It’s so easy. It is so easy,” he said of finding diverse candidates. “There are hundreds of working women directors. If you have 22 episodes, I can name 22 top-notch female directors right now.”

The difficult part for show-runners, McDonald said, was taking the risk to hire someone they have not worked with before.

“We do it all the time with actors, I don’t know why we don’t do it with directors,” he said.

None of the show-runners for the other 13 nominees agreed to interviews. The Guardian sent our statistics and queries to the remaining shows and received just one response, from Game of Thrones.

“We are extremely proud of the contributions made by women on Game of Thrones, both in front of and behind the camera,” said a spokesperson for HBO in a statement. “While most people are familiar with the actresses who dominated this past season, they would be remiss not to acknowledge that such positions as executive producer to director of photography to executive in charge of production to production designer to executive in charge of post are all held by women on the series and are key to its success.”

It’s enough to make Cersei reach for the wine.

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