KT Walsh
CREATIVE  PRODUCER | WRITER | MEDIA RESEARCHER 

Gender Norms Of Media's Labor Landscape

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It’s not a new concept. Men dominate all screens with creative leadership. This systemic gender bias yields fewer female driven storylines and speaking roles (Geena Davis Foundation). And when a woman is being directed, she must dress, act, and speak just like a man would want her to because that’s who’s directing.

 

“Movies don’t totally project life for women, it’s sort of like a male’s projection of it.” In her 2017 Netflix Special, Sarah Silverman jokes about the reality of any media we consume—broadcast, screened, or streamed—likely coming from the perspective of a white man. Women and girls view a myopic perspective in these images then internalize them as idols for womanhood. Role models for young girls a born from a man’s ideal aesthetic of women.

 

If media reaches most of the global population and nearly half that population is female, shouldn’t the creators of media also be 50% represented? Yet in the entertainment and advertising workforces, only 15-20% of director roles are held by women (The Celluloid Ceiling, Boxed In, The Big Won Study), leaving women to seek other roles creating media content, like producer positions. Approximately, 40% of producer roles go to women. The labor of women is unseen in creative direction. Like Sarah said, it’s more like a male’s projection of it. 

 

Why can’t women break into director roles to balance the perspective? The #MeToo Movement couldn’t totally shake the imbalance of creative media production. Being excluded from director roles in this way is patronizing. I talked to a female producer in LA who’s worked in television for 18 years, “It is that idea of acceptable… you probably can’t manage five cameras and understand where the cables go or color temperature. But you can certainly put a schedule together and make sure that all the people are in the right places on time with their shoes tied on. It’s this idea that women can manage and facilitate, but they can’t direct.”

 

The relationship between a director and producer are reminiscent of traditional gender roles. The producer and director are the mom and dad of any production. The immaterial soft skills such as affect, care, education, organization, planning, socialization, coordination, and logistics are necessary for a producer to be successful and congruent with reproductive labor. In this sense a Producer can be viewed as a domestic laborer, and the Director as the earning worker. Like in a domestic household, the value of earning worker, the director, is generated through his consumption of the reproductive labor of the domestic laborer, the producer. In a way, the director’s labor increases in value based on the producer’s skill. The collective success of a production can bolster a director as a visionary, and hold him up as an artistic genius increasing the likelihood his ideas are executed into media then distributed for mass viewership for the lifecycle of his career.

 

Directors have long been regarded this way, even outside of Hollywood. French New Wave Cinema popularized the value system of auteur theory naming the director as the one true artist of cinema. In this theory the script is "realized" by the director who has the presiding power and authority to adapt the story to fit his vision. This has privileged director roles in society where auteurs are overwhelmingly male. Steven Spielberg, Wes Anderson, Quinten Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Woody Allen, are all modern motion picture auteurs. It’s the pedestal filmmakers dream of reaching. Would society ever consider producer, creator, director Elizabeth Banks a modern day auteur? Is she discounted because she started as a pretty actress or regarded more as producer because she’s seen as a woman first?

 

A typical day as a producer on a film set, I listen more than talk. I'll constantly observe the creative team: the director, cinematographer, the writers, the suits, like a German shepherd herding her flock. The copywriter has wondered off on a phone call. The account supervisor attempts to connect to wifi. I check the production schedule, we are behind. Craft services comes over to provide snacks. This brings the team back to the monitors to view the camera feed and discuss the next shot. Decisions are made and camera rolls. People are happy watching the take happen. I look at my watch, it’s 10:42am and everything is going right. I’m the mother hen of this production, protecting creative integrity, solving problems, therapizing, and making any and all arrangements for a timely success.

 

This idea of the producer as a domestic laborer is softly recognized within the industry. An in-house creative director for a hardware tech giant in San Francisco points out, “I think you do a lot of emotional labor as producers, and as women we have been told that if we keep doing that emotional labor we will be promoted… It’s handy work and you have to take what you can get.”

 

It’s true, we have to take what we can get, even if that means always being the mom. Creative production has become organized misogyny by the rules of men who came before. Women striving for creative leadership are exhausted by pleasing men and the mental gymnastics of simplicities like dressing ourselves. We decide how to dress in a way that is feminine but not sexual, professional but approachable, flattering but not too fitted, and won’t draw attention to hard nipples when it’s cold in conference rooms, but also pants with adequate pockets. We wipe tears away for our male collogues and laugh along to lewd jokes. It’s perplexing that after harassment scandals and convictions, I still check my words for unintentional sexual innuendos. We work tirelessly on this balance hoping to be recognized for talent and vision, but then continuously talked over. Our voices are disregarded, and our stories untold.

 

I stand five foot five. This an important detail because, as a producer, I’m often the only woman on a film set where there’s a lot of standing around. That also means on average, I’m much shorter than my collogues. The conversation can be literally above me. Countless times I’ve voiced my ideas to have them unnoticed until praised coming out of man’s mouth, verbatim. Leaving me unclear if my voice was unheard or my ideas stolen. In 18 years making content, I’ve worked with one female director—and I fought to hire her. It’s no surprise industry-wide male bias and sexual harassment are the results of unchecked gender inequality and chauvinism in the workplace. Media resulting from this creative and business environment is stained with a male lens. Which is all media when men maintain the majority in creative leadership.

 

A long time Creative Director from Chicago has worked on national advertising campaigns in a variety of markets points out the bias he’s witnessed, “I’ve seen people been discriminated against in a systemic way, women just had hit a wall and couldn’t advance beyond it, treated as second class creatives and that was 20 years ago.”

 

Representation behind the camera cascades down all media. The male lens is so celebrated, women are remaking themselves in that image, consider the beauty, wedding, influencer, plastic surgery, wellness industries. From advertising of the mid 20th century to ongoing social media of Instagram, we’ve been long alerted to the fractured self-image women and young girls suffer in the epidemic of toxic masculine culture. The decision-making power from this myopic perspective has affected representation on screen and hiring behind the scenes for decades. Until we can get more women in director’s chairs, every time a man is behind the camera, he’s making a choice for how every woman sees themselves.