I think it’s a neat idea to have a whole TV show spanning multiple seasons where the creative staff are all women. It’s both an artistic and political decision. I wish them good luck!
…how is the “stated intent to hire an all female group” materially different to what is happening in Hollywood at every level, both above the line and below it? Do you think that stating that you are going to do something is different from a nudge and wink?
Its why Ava doesn’t fear a lawsuit. Holywood have been on notice for decades that things have to change and they haven’t done a damn thing: in fact that while some areas have improved in others they the numbers have gotten objectively worse. We are talking about an industry where women are consistently paid less at every level than men. Where film school graduates are 50% women but they only directed 7% of the top 250 films, and where Ava DuVernay became the first African American woman to be given a movie with a budget over 100 million in 2016. Its an industry where over 400 directors have been nominated for the Oscar for best director: and only 5 of those directors have been women, and only 1 woman has won. Its an industry where Selma Hayek had to add and then perform in a lesbian scene just to get her movie (Frida) finished at the insistence of a predatory producer. Its an industry that celebrates mediocrity, where Colin Trevorrow is picked to helm Jurassic World 3 after the disaster of “The Book of Henry”, and Josh Trank’s career is back on track after the disaster of Fantastic Four, but women directors get nowhere near the same latitude even if the movies they direct are moderate successes. Its an industry where women are crying out for parity, where they are yelling out for directing roles, but they are rarely given the opportunity.
And we haven’t even talked about #metoo yet.
The reality is that its all a game of pretend.
As long as we pretend there isn’t a problem, we can get outraged somebody says “they’ve had enough” and does something about it.
Ava knows exactly what she is doing. Hollywood isn’t opening the doors fast enough so Ava has taken a sledgehammer and is knocking the doors down. If the industry is going to continue to hire people that look and sound like them (but not admit it) then why is it (morally) wrong for Ava to do the exact same thing, but to do it honestly? Is it the honesty bit that is troubling you?
But your supposedly-hypothetical counterexample IS in fact how everything has been run, from forever until quite recently. If not still going on.
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Nope. Not legally in the UK.
The usual way Chinese restaurants hire if they want Chinese FOH staff is to insist the staff speak Chinese, which they can claim as necessary (especially as in the UK, most Chinese- and Japanese and Korean- restaurants do tend to have Chinese cooks, so ‘we speak that in the kitchen’ works). Or they advertise only in Chinese, or only in the local Chinese supermarket. Surprise surprise, they get only Chinese applicants, so they’re not discriminating when that’s who they hire.
One of my former housemates, who’s Chinese, pointed it out to me when I was job hunting to help me work out where not to bother applying.
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I’m not quite comfortable with the idea of stating that a show is going to be run all by women either; I’m not overly worried about the discrimination aspect as a one off, but it seems… gimmicky.
Plus, if the show has any problems, or just isn’t all that good, that’s going to be laid solely at the feet of ‘hiring women when they can’t do the job properly’.
…that exactly what happens now. That literally happens all the time in the industry.
So if the show has any problems, or just isn’t all that good, of course it is going to be laid solely at the feet of 'hiring women when they can’t do the job properly". But that would have happened regardless.
What Ms Keegan calls “the Ishtar effect” is one of the definitions of chauvinism: having lower requirements for favored-group than for disfavored-group in what should be equal ground. In this case, it’s male-chauvinism so the respective groups are male and female. From “boys’ handwriting must be understandable, girls’ handwritting must be understandable and pretty” to telling an engineer that her work is superb but she must be sweeter, it’s a part of life that we all run into time and again and that it’s about bloody time we stopped running into.
Sometimes in order to be able to evaluate people you need to isolate them. Sometimes, in order to evaluate groups, you need to isolate the group. Volvo’s women-designed YCC hasn’t made it to production (most concept cars don’t), but many of the things it included have. This social experiment may bring up some other things where men and women working in television/movies in the US are currently different and where, by recognizing those differences, we can learn to appreciate the contributions of different sides better when working in teams. A lot of them will only be seen by those in the studio - but it is them who will go to be part of those teams, anyway.
Wrongdoing is easier to prove when the perpetrator admits to it. That’s the major difference.
All of those are of the effects on individual women being disproportionately affected by flops, but this is being pushed as ‘women’ running the show. Showcasing women’s skills. All fine it’s a great show, but effectively holding the show up as evidence of what happens when you give women a chance obviously runs a risk.
A flop wouldn’t just be just attributed to the individual women involved, it’d be likely seen as a reflection on women in the industry in general. Even more than normal, which yes, happens anyway. I’m not bothered because they hired women, but because they made a big deal out of it, before the show was even recorded.
Hollywood is not an entity. Each production company or studio is an entity. It may be that the people in charge of the production companies and studios are all sexists and discriminate against but that is hard to prove. If Ms DuVernay follows through on her threat then she should be sued. It makes no sense to discriminate against one man because another man got another job from someone else.
Should a restaurateur be able to announce that they will not hire hispanics just because so many other restaurants hire them? Either discrimination is bad or its not.
Because that would be great and in no way would open the floodgates to sue all the male dominated companies.
Discrimination being bad, therefore marks essentially all hiring in all fields for the entire previous two thousand years (at the very least) as uniformly bad from beginning to end. Is it wrong to make a concerted effort to change that?
I don’t know much about this show other than reading its description, but given the title and that it’s on OWN, and that they’re featuring female directors, writers, etc. I’d have to say it’s intended to present a story from a woman’s perspective. Which is really all they need for an artistic work to state that it is a bona fide occupational requirement to hire women as directors, writers, etc. to accomplish their artistic vision. The courts are usually very lenient toward artistic works for these sorts of situations in claims of discrimination; any threatened discrimination suit is going to get tossed.
Which Ava DuVernay certainly knew before she trolled the champions of Male Privilege with her remarks.
Haven’t read the article, but this sounds dubious to me:
Unless those other studios have a stated policy that they are only hiring male directors and writers/producers/etc, it doesn’t seem like it’s the same thing, nor likely to work, while stating that this is her intention seems to me like a good case could be made for discrimination.
I’m no legal expert or even really knowledgeable so perhaps it’s all the same.
Are you speaking with actual lawyerly knowledge? Because that sounds like a worrisome precedent to set. Are there any cases where explicit gender (or race) discrimination in hiring has been upheld for reasons of that sort?
This seems different than other examples discussed in this thread (hooters waitresses, front-of-house for ethnic restaurants) because it contains underlying assumptions about the talents and capabilities of people based on their gender.
Again, I have no problem with Ava DV setting out to hire the best possible directors for her show and they all end up being women. I don’t have a problem with Ava DV going out of her way to give women a leg up to help make up for a lifetime of unequal treatment. But both of those things can be done without categorically stating that applicants of one gender will not even be considered.
Yeah, me too. I’m not bothered in the least by this.
Sure.
But as far as I know there is neither a legal or ethical principle that states that person A is allowed to commit a crime against person B because people who look like person B have committed lots of crimes against people who look like person A.
If Discrimination is bad then it should be ended and people like DuVernay morally condemned. If it is only bad when done against favored groups then we need to fight hard to make sure our group is among the favored.
Every episode of Queen Sugar has already been directed by a woman, and it looks like only two male writers have been used on the show as well. DuVernay has a vision for her show and it doesn’t involve male directors. Anyone who doesn’t like it can, basically, suck it. Their loss, it’s a helluva show.
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I am not a lawyer, but yes there are cases where hiring that would otherwise have been discriminatory has been allowed, because it was recognized as a bona fide occupational requirement. You should look up that term if you want more information, as the courts have been quite nuanced in applying it – for example, specifying you are only hiring women waitresses at your Hooters’ restaurant has been allowed, whereas specifying you are only hiring white men or women for your Cracker Barrel restaurant would not be allowable.
If you’ve got a show that you’re distinguishing as being helmed by women, then it’s pretty important that you only hire women to helm the show. Hence, it would become a claim of a bona fide occupational requirement.