Lately much has been written about sexual harassment in the media industry, particularly as Harvey Weinstein’s offenses have (finally) come to light. The number of women stepping forward to speak out about his abuse of power continues to grow and other women are moved to speak out against additional offenders.
One writer notes that “sexual harassment is rooted in power imbalances.”
Our purpose at Picture Parity is to change that imbalance – to promote parity for women in media. For our part, we rate movies and televisions shows to indicate how women-centric they are based on the presence of women behind the camera in leadership positions and in front of the camera in prominent and strong and positive roles.
Not surprisingly, there’s a clear correlation between the presence of women in leadership positions and how well titles rate. For example:
The average Picture Parity rating for all movies we’ve scored is 3.5. That average goes up to 6.8 when a woman director is at the helm.
Currently though, only 11% of the movies we’ve rated were directed by women so there’s a lot of work to be done. We encourage you to support movies and shows with higher Picture Parity ratings. The more successful these titles are, the more will be made, the more opportunities there will be for women in leadership positions, the better the roles for women, and the quicker the media industry power imbalance will disappear.