New York Times reports that the American Civil Liberty Union (A.C.L.U.) wants the Federal Agencies to inquire into Hollywood’s long entrenched hiring practices that deliberately discriminates against women, citing that over several decades, only 4% of the top grossing movies were directed by women. The American most powerful Non-governmental organization wants the Federal agencies to specifically look into Hollywood studios, networks and talent agencies that deliberately show bias against females in their hiring process, which is against the United States Law.
New York Times further reports that Hollywood’s bias towards the minorities is not something new and during the 60s, the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission came to the conclusion that Hollywood showed bias towards minorities and recommended for the Justice Department’s action at the time. Since then, Hollywood has made some progress, especially in the recruitment of non-white directors, but the situation for women directors in general has not improved at all.
“Women directors aren’t working on an even playing field and aren’t getting a fair opportunity to succeed,” said Melissa Goodman, director of the L.G.B.T., Gender and Reproductive Justice Project at the A.C.L.U. of Southern California. “Gender discrimination is illegal. And, really, Hollywood doesn’t get this free pass when it comes to civil rights and gender discrimination.”
A.C.L.U. detailed statistical and anecdotal evidence of what it calls systemic “overt sex stereotyping and implicit bias.” Should the agencies agree to investigate and then find bias, they might take actions that could include filing legal charges.
Actress Jill Soloway who won a Golden Globe Award for her Amazon ‘Transparent’ movie welcomed the move to change Hollywood’s predominantly male point of view in the hiring process.
“At least you should be aware that you should be ashamed of yourself if your show is 90 percent written by male writers,” she said. “Watching something written and directed by women, to me that’s the future. It’s not just, ‘Hey, give women more jobs.’ ”