Fifty-two Hollywood powerhouses are fed up with the lip service paid to Hollywood’s gender problem, and are determined to enact major, industry-wide change. “Studio and agency insiders, producers, directors, and industry leaders revealed ReFrame, a focused and results-oriented push to break entertainment’s gender-parity logjam,” The Hollywood Reporter announced. Group members include “Boys Don’t Cry” director Kimberly Peirce, “Ghostbusters” helmer Paul Feig, and “Hunger Games” producer Nina Jacobson. This is huge news: ReFrame has the potential to manifest a dramatically more inclusive Hollywood.
We know the statistics for women in film and TV are bad — and the needle hasn’t been moving nearly as much as many would like to believe. This depressing fact weighed heavily on Oscar-winning producer Cathy Schulman’s mind after she became president of Women in Film in 2011. “I was standing up in front of a group of people doing yet another speech about the lack of parity in Hollywood, and I felt, ‘How could I possibly be running an organization like Women in Film and repeating statistics that have essentially been flatlined since 1998?’” Schulman recalls.
Schulman joined forces with Keri Putmam, executive director of the Sundance Institute, and their two orgs joined forces to launch the Female Filmmakers Initiative, which funded landmark research investigating the barriers facing women directors.
This diverse group of insiders committed to change first convened in October 2015. They participated in a “top-secret two-day summit” which included guest presentations from tech, finance, and activist leaders who discussed topics like unconscious bias. After brainstorming in small teams, the group “identified three specific missions.”
One mission is a stamp or badge modeled on the Human Rights Campaign’s iconic equals-sign logo. The point is to encourage productions to meet a certain standard of female participation (such as directors, writers, producers, and actors).
Nina Jacobson believes that focusing the group’s energy on parity at the production level is a manageable first step, but is doubtful it’ll be all smooth sailing. “The potential risk is that the corporation will be like, ‘OK, great, we’ll encourage our filmmakers to do that, but it’s not on us,’” she says. “The challenge is to make sure studios and networks are telling the filmmakers, ‘We want those stamps. We don’t want to be the company at the end of the year that didn’t get a single one.’”
Second, ReFrame will employ the Culture Change Toolkit “which will educate and advise companies that become ReFrame partners on unconscious bias and how to recruit and retain diverse talent,” THR writes.
We often say that women aren’t considered for jobs. It’s not just that they’re not being hired — they don’t even make the list of potential candidates. As part of the effort people affiliated with the project who have hiring power — including Jacobson and [Miramax executive vp Zanne] Devine — have said that they will employ their own Rooney Rule and will reject lists sent by agencies that don’t include at least one candidate who is a woman or person of color.
Third is sponsorship — a practice common in business and something that men have done for men since time immemorial. This is mentorship on steroids. It will not be enough to offer advice; participants will need to recommend women — starting with directors — for actual jobs.
THR reveals that “proteges will be paired with sponsor teams of male and female senior execs who will actively advocate for them. “They’ll come in and diagnose: ‘You’re brilliant. Why aren’t you working more? I’m going to come in and call the right person on your behalf,’” explains Peirce. “It’s what we’re all doing anyway, but this is a more codified interference with a systemic obstacle.”
So, how will ReFrame ambassadors take on this ambitious project? During the next three months, they’ll be “dispatched to meetings with companies across the industry, asking them to sign a partner pledge and participate in all three programs.”
This could initiate really meaningful change. Already, 22 studios and networks “have agreed to take meetings, including all six majors, HBO, and Netflix.” And the meetings aren’t just for show: Company heads will be present. There are some serious options for tangible results.
ReFrame will continue to work with Dr. Stacy Smith and USC’s Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative to gather more information. They’ll work with “econometricians to measure more precisely the performance, domestically and abroad, of female-led content,” according to THR. “We see a lot of discussion about implicit bias, but there are all sorts of explicit bias about what sells that is articulated very publicly,” says Smith. “Our goal is to illuminate those practices and suggest there may in fact be another way that is just as profitable.”
With ReFrame’s launch and the recent news that the EEOC is currently in settlement talks with major studios charged with discriminating against women directors, it’s looking like Hollywood is poised for an epic gender makeover.
Head over to The Hollywood Reporter for more details about ReFrame and to watch a video interview with some of the initiative’s ambassadors.
