LOS ANGELES — The Directors Guild of America says networks and studios are to blame for the “deplorable” dearth of female directors in Hollywood, following a call by the American Civil Liberties Union for an investigation into the industry’s “systemic failure” to hire female directors.
The DGA released a statement late Tuesday after the ACLU of Southern California and the national ACLU Women’s Rights Project announced earlier they had sent letters to federal and state employment officials to call attention to “dramatic disparities” in the hiring of women as film and television directors.
The ACLU cites statistical evidence from various studies and anecdotal accounts from more than 50 female directors.
“Hearing such an outcry about it, and when it’s backed up with statistics, it’s a pretty solid sign there’s discrimination going on,” said Ariela Migdal, a senior attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project.
The DGA, which represents directors of most network and studio productions, said it is “a long-standing advocate pressuring the industry to do the right thing, which is to change their hiring practices and hire more women and minority directors.”
“There are few issues to which the DGA is more committed than improving employment opportunities for women and minority directors,” the group’s statement said.
Fewer women are working as directors today than two decades ago, according to the ACLU. It cites research showing women represented only 7 percent of directors on the 250 top-grossing movies last year. That is 2 percentage points lower than in 1998.
A recent study commissioned by the Sundance Institute and Women in Film and conducted by researchers at USC shows women have comprised fewer than 5 percent of directors of top films during the past two decades. But about half of film-school students are female.
In its letter to the federal equal employment commission, which previously investigated gender discrimination in entertainment in the 1960s and ’70s, the ACLU writes: “Decades have passed and gender disparities remain as stark as they were in the 1970s.”
“Our hope is that the involvement of the civil rights agencies and calling it what it is — a civil rights issue — will lead to concrete solutions,” Migdal said.
Kathryn Bigelow, the only woman to ever win the DGA’s top honor and the best director Oscar, told Time magazine that gender discrimination “stigmatizes” the entertainment industry.
