Post date: May 15, 2015 2:54:3 PM

A.C.L.U., Citing Bias Against Women, Wants Inquiry Into Hollywood’s Hiring Practices

The director Jill Soloway, who won a Golden Globe for her show “Transparent,” said the push to look into hiring practices was a vital challenge to Hollywood’s predominately male point of view.

ANNIE TRITT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Now, in a round of letters sent to the commission, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing and the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the A.C.L.U. detailed statistical and anecdotal evidence of what it calls systemic “overt sex stereotyping and implicit bias.” Should the agencies agree to investigate and then find bias, they might take actions that could include filing legal charges.

Legal experts said possible charges of employment gender discrimination might be hampered because such laws cover employer-employee relationships but not individual contractors, which many directors are. Ms. Goodman, however, said that, particularly in network television, many female directors were indeed employees. Another challenge would be ensuring that any remediation extend beyond window dressing.

A broader effect could result from the A.C.L.U., government agencies and the public simply putting pressure on studios and networks, in an industry that has long prided itself on being progressive.

“I’m sure the studios don’t want a black eye,” said Charles A. Sullivan, who teaches law at Seton Hall University. “Even an investigation might be a black eye.”

Michael J. Zimmer, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago, said a broad perceptual shift was needed. “The first level is to get the attention of the industry, that this is a real problem,” he said. “It’s sort of assumed that it’s a given, a state of nature, and of course it’s not.”

The A.C.L.U. did not name specific offenders, but requested that the agencies use studies and hiring information from major studios, networks and the Directors Guild of America to identify employers with the worst records.

The letters cited numerous examples of bias: for instance, a University of Southern California study found that of the top-grossing 100 films from 2013 and 2014, just 1.9 percent were directed by women. A Directors Guild of America analysis of 220 television shows consisting of 3,500 episodes broadcast in 2013 and 2014 found that 14 percent were directed by women. A third of all shows had no female director at all.

Propelling this paucity, the A.C.L.U. said, is an industrywide boys’ network in which gender discrimination is often on overt display. The organization collected stories from 50 female directors who reported being told by executives that a show was not “woman friendly”; learning that producers had repeatedly told agents to “not send women” for prospective jobs; or being informed at a meeting for a television job that “we already hired a woman this season.”

One female director with decades of experience said Hollywood worked by its own rules, which can be alluring but also allowed executives to say wildly inappropriate things. “Sometimes showrunners will say, ‘This isn’t a good show for a woman director,’ or, ‘Our actors are hard on women,’ ” said the director, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared career repercussions. “Or they’re approaching it as if ‘We’re protecting you by not giving you this job.’ That way they turn it on its side, to make everything O.K.”

News of the A.C.L.U.’s accusations was met with cautious cheer. Jamie Babbit, who has been at the helm of episodes of “The Gilmore Girls” and other shows, said that although she was excited about the A.C.L.U. becoming involved, she was concerned that there might be backlash. All women in the business, she said, confront subtle sexism every day. “When you’re a woman director, it’s a constant conversation,” she said.

Jill Soloway, who won a Golden Globe for her Amazon show “Transparent,” said the push to investigate hiring practices was a vital challenge to Hollywood’s predominately male point of view, which is already being widened by comedians like Amy Schumer and the women of “Broad City.” “At least you should be aware that you should be ashamed of yourself if your show is 90 percent written by male writers,” she said. “Watching something written and directed by women, to me that’s the future. It’s not just, ‘Hey, give women more jobs.’ ”

Conversations around Hollywood’s disparate treatment of men and women have been gaining momentum, with Meryl Streep financing a lab for female screenwriters over 40 and the Sony hack revealing that even a megastar like Jennifer Lawrence earns less than her male co-stars. A Tumblr account for female directors begun in April is brimming with grim accounts of what these directors endure.

The A.C.L.U. is also challenging the statement, oft-repeated by studio executives, that there are not many qualified female directors. A quarter of the films shown at the Sundance Film Festival between 2002 and 2014 were directed by women, though independent female filmmakers are far less likely than men to jump to major studio pictures. The A.C.L.U. is urging the government agencies to look into how studios and producers create shortlists of potential directors for specific projects, lists that the organization said disproportionately exclude women. Talent agencies could be culpable too, the A.C.L.U. said, because of their gatekeeping role.