OTTAWA — Canada’s broadcasters are committing themselves to achieving gender parity in TV and film production, where 50% of key creative roles will be held by women by 2025.
On Tuesday, the CRTC posted the results so far from its Women in Production initiative to promote gender parity, which included the formation of a steering committee and the convening of a summit in December 2018 that brought together executives from Canada’s largest public and private broadcasters. Those broadcasters have now published their respective action plans for achieving gender parity in key creative positions, such as producer, director, writer, showrunner, cinematographer and editor.
The major broadcasters which took part in the Women in Production Summit in December included Bell Media, Blue Ant Media, CBC/Radio-Canada, Corus Entertainment, Rogers Media, TVA Group and WildBrain (formerly DHX Media). In general, these broadcasters have committed to reaching their gender parity targets by 2025. However, WildBrain said it is working toward achieving gender parity in the creative teams behind its original commissioned productions by 2024.
Some of the broadcasters said they are well on the way to having equal gender representation in key production positions related to their programming. In fact, in a news release on Tuesday, CBC/Radio-Canada said it has already surpassed its gender parity goal for its commissioned programs. “During the 2018/19 broadcast year across all original English and French scripted and unscripted shows on all broadcast and streaming platforms, the public broadcaster supported 62% female-led projects where the majority of the key creative roles of producer, director, writer and showrunner were held by women,” its release said.
Rogers Media said in its gender parity action plan that it chose to focus not only on shows it commissions from independent producers, but also on its in-house productions where it has a better opportunity to effect change. The key decision-making roles Rogers identified for in-house production were: managerial roles in production and news; programming and planning roles; on-air performers and journalists. “We are pleased to report that 48% of the key roles in these categories are held by women at Rogers Media,” reads the company’s action plan. Furthermore, Rogers Media said 43% of the key creative roles in its commissioned independent productions are held by women.
“In the past few years, we have worked to build a path for hiring more women in the director’s chair, which has traditionally been a male-dominated role.” – Corus Entertainment
Corus Entertainment said in its action plan, of the big-budget dramas it has commissioned for the 2020 broadcast year, on average 51% of producers are female, 49% of writers are female, and 30% of directors are female. “In the past few years, we have worked to build a path for hiring more women in the director’s chair, which has traditionally been a male-dominated role,” Corus said in its action plan.
Bell Media also included in its action plan data showing the participation level of women in key creative roles in its independently produced programming. The data was averaged over the last three years and for English-language drama productions, 60.24% of producers were women, 47.03% of writers were women, but only 8.21% of directors were women. Women fared better generally speaking in French-language drama productions at Bell Media, where 54.64% of producers were women, 64.47% of writers were women, and 31.04% of directors were women.
Blue Ant Media said the gender parity action plan for its eight discretionary television services will focus on key creative positions essential in the production of factual programming. Those roles include: broadcast executive, executive producer, series producer, director, head of production (line producer), and story editor. “Currently, approximately 50% of Blue Ant’s commissioned productions have women occupying 50% of roles identified by Blue Ant as being the key creative positions,” reads its action plan. Blue Ant added that its goal is to achieve gender parity in 100% of its commissioned programs by the end of its 2024 broadcast year.
TVA Group and WildBrain did not include in their action plans current data regarding gender representation in key creative roles related to their programming.
All of the major broadcasters’ gender parity action plans can be found on the CRTC website here.
The CRTC said its next step is to engage with smaller and independent broadcasters to see how they can voluntarily contribute to the goal of increasing women’s access to key positions within the TV and film production industry.
