Tag: Diversity

Inclusion Riders: What They Are & Why We Need Them

What is an Inclusion Rider?
An “inclusion rider” is a clause attached to an actor’s contract that makes stipulations about the diversity of the cast and the crew, in order to retain the actor services. It is essentially a contractual obligation that need to be adhered to by the company making the production – and it should ensure that diverse hiring in the film and TV projects they work on is guaranteed.

How Does It Work?
The idea was first coined by Stacey Smith, founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California at her TedTalk, as she spoke about the positive outcomes that come from this method. She believed it could be a way to tackle Hollywood’s diversity problems, by removing the conscious/unconscious bias that people face in auditions, interviews and hiring processes.

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Jumping Hurdles, But The Race Is Not Won

Jumping Hurdles, But The Race Is Not Won

2010 is a big year for Women in Film & TV UK (WFTV). This is the year we celebrate our coming of age. That’s right, we’re 21 years young! But we’re not the eldest in the family. WFTV UK was the third chapter to be established (our older siblings being LA and New York) as part of an international community of women working in the media that has grown to include over 10,000 members within 37 chapters worldwide. Women in Film and TV, as a brand, is well established in the industry, and well respected.

As Head of Communications here in the UK, I’m often asked (usually by men) why there’s a need for our organisation to exist in the 21st Century. I would love to be able to say there isn’t one (even though it would mean I’d be out of a job). But the statistics clearly show that, 21 years on from our founding, there most certainly still is.

The 2009 Skillset Employment census showed us that nearly 5000 women had left the TV industry since the recession, compared to just 750 men. It also found that, in general, women were over-qualified, over-worked and underpaid compared to their male counterparts. Broadcast Magazine’s annual survey of women in the TV industry for 2009 seemed to paint a similarly worrying picture. It found that the gender pay gap, ageism, and sexism had all worsened in the industry since their first survey of 2006.

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Disability & Television – Why Does It All Still Feel So Difficult?

Disability & Television – Why Does It All Still Feel So Difficult?

I’ve been banging on about this for years. If 1 in 5 of us is disabled why are there so few disabled people on the telly? And even fewer making our programmes? I guess the two things are almost certainly connected.

Yes I know there’s the argument that you can’t see lots of disabilities so there are alot more disabled people ON telly and IN telly than you think, and that’s probably true. But I doubt either figure gets anywhere near the level you’d expect if TV was reflecting real life, as many of us programme makers like to think it does.

Researchers recently took a snapshot of three weeks of programming across British TV. Against the 20% of the real population with a disability, only 0.9% of people in TV land had one. Not good. The current data suggests that disabled people make up only 2% of the TV industry workforce. Not much better.

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