Report: Gender Gap Widening Among U.K. TV Directors

A new report from Directors UK has revealed a drop in the number of female directors working in British television.

The report, Who’s Calling the Shots? A Report on Gender Inequality among Screen Directors working in UK Television, reveals that the four main U.K. broadcasters—BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5—all saw a decline in the percentage of episodes directed by women between 2013 and 2016. There was a decline of 2.98 percentage points in the share of TV episodes directed by women—from 27.29 percent to 24.31 percent. Channel 4 saw a 5.4 percentage point decline during this period, while Channel 5 saw a 2.9 percent decline. BBC and ITV saw a 1.8 and 1.5 percentage point decline, respectively.

Factual programming showed the most significant decrease, down by 9.8 percent. Children’s programming was second, with a decline of 4.5 percentage points. Meanwhile, multicamera and entertainment increased by 2.8 percentage points, and drama and comedy saw an increase of 4.3 percentage points. These two areas that saw gains are where there have been targeted career-development initiatives for women directors delivered by Directors UK in partnership with Creative Skillset. Following the launch of Directors UK’s first report in 2014, the group began working with broadcasters to place women directors in on-set career-development placements within continuing drama (soaps). The latest research reveals that, since then, continuing drama has experienced an increase of 7.3 percentage points.

Directors UK is calling for broadcasters to commit 0.25 percent of their commissioning spend for all program-making to fund career-development and industry-access schemes to close the gender gap. It is also proposing that Ofcom make it mandatory for all U.K. broadcasters to monitor and publicly report their diversity characteristics of all those making programs for them, to include freelancers as well as permanent staff. And for broadcasters to monitor and publish the equality data of senior production roles such as producers, writers and directors as well as the heads of departments.

The group is also asking Ofcom to set broadcasters targets to use production crews whose gender, ethnic and disability makeup reflects that of the U.K. population, both in front of and behind the camera, by 2020. There’s a call for those doing the hiring to commit to fairer recruitment practices in line with other industries to improve equal access to opportunities for all; in particular, externally advertising roles, the introduction of written references for freelance production staff and a requirement for women to make up 50 percent of those being interviewed for senior production roles.

Directors UK board member and factual director, Toral Dixit, commented: “It is not acceptable that women make up one-third of working directors in the U.K. but only direct one in four television programs. To generate a shift towards gender equality, broadcasters must embrace positive interventions across all genres and deliver fair and transparent hiring practices for both freelancers and staff. Targets must be set and tracked through mandatory monitoring so successes can be built on and replicated across the industry.”

Directors UK ‘s CEO, Andrew, Chowns added: “While the overall decline is very disappointing, results in continuing drama show that collaborative interventions made in partnership with broadcasters and production partners do work to unlock new opportunities for women directors by developing skills and building expertise. These workplace initiatives must now become more widely available, so we are asking broadcasters to commit 0.25 percent of their commissioning spend across all programs to fund industry access and career development schemes for underrepresented groups.”