International Women’s Day

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, it is always an honour to speak in this Chamber, but never more so than in this annual debate, among a roster of inspiring noble Baronesses, and indeed some noble Lords. I join others in congratulating the Minister on her new role, and the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, on his maiden speech.

I will speak to one of the six missions associated with this year’s theme, #EachforEqual: the mission to increase the visibility of women creatives. Given the many types of discrimination that women face, Members of your Lordships’ House may well ask why this particular mission matters. They might imagine, as many do, that the creative industries are genuinely meritocratic, with women accessing the same opportunities as men. Unfortunately, research proves this not to be true.

Across the nine sectors of the UK’s creative industries, the workforce is deeply unequal. The usual factors underpinning gender inequality are at play, as they are across society, but there are key structures of the cultural labour market that shape the life decisions of women in the workforce, and they impact particularly on women of colour and women from working-class backgrounds. Women are present, of course, but in areas such as theatre, publishing and museums they are largely absent from high-profile positions. In television and film, the lack of women is striking. According to the British Film Institute, among the 11,000 credits for directors of British films over 100 years, just 5% were women.

It would be easy to focus on motherhood as a reason why women drop out of the creative workforce. It may be a factor, but it is not the whole story. In too many parts of the creative economy, there is a pervasive sexism at work. This is not all on the scale of the high-profile sexual harassment cases that sparked the worldwide #MeToo movement, but rather a series of ongoing micro-discriminations that see women given lower status, while senior roles are assumed to be the work of men. This can leave women uncredited, or excluded from the creative process, and see women labelled as “risky”—not just because they might leave to have children but because of a persistent industry assumption that men, and male-led stories, make for better box office.

Underpinning these biases is a set of structures that disadvantage women: unpaid internships, temporary contracts and jobs offering low, or even no, pay. Working hours are long and unpredictable, with evening events the norm. The importance of networks and connections in accessing job opportunities in a sector that tends to favour informal hiring practices means additional socialising, outside office hours. These are challenges for workers of all genders, but when they interact with sexist assumptions, or when women try to combine caring responsibilities with work, they present greater barriers to women than to men. It is hard to disentangle these biases and structures because each reinforces the other.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that women leave the sector early, or that they are far less likely to climb the ladder to leadership positions. The situation is better in the not-for-profit sector, where 53% of the UK’s museums and galleries are led by women. But this optimistic statistic hides further evidence of inequality: the higher the annual turnover of the organisation, the less likely it is to be female led. In London, in 2018, 75% of organisations receiving over £1 million in funding had male directors at the helm.

These depictions of the cultural workforce go beyond questions of inequality to reflect enduring struggles over value and worth. In this, the creative industries are simply a microcosm of society as a whole, which still values women’s labour at a lower rate than men’s.

Your Lordships will be glad to hear that there is some cause for celebration as we mark International Women’s Day this year. Recent analysis by the policy and evidence centre of media reporting of women in the creative industries found that since 2013, references to females had risen to 40%. This means that the amount of space give to women in the media now exceeds the proportion of women actually working in the creative industries.

However, like all silver linings, there is a cloud attached. The media reports placed much more focus on the sounds made by women, such as laughs, cries, giggles, even coos, or non-verbal reactions, such as smiles, grins and nods. Words that imply creative achievements and leadership roles, such as “directed”, “performed”, “designed”, or “managed”, “founded” and “launched” were more likely to refer to men. When Hansard reports this speech, it may be tempted to add here, in quotation marks, “she sighed”.

I chose to speak about gender inequality in the creative industries today for two reasons: to highlight the structural issues and biases that disadvantage women creatives, and to highlight the consequences of this beyond the demographics of the sector. Films, television, books, theatre, music and art are there to tell us who we are, and if the workforce is skewed, the message is skewed. Women have important perspectives to bring and narratives to share, and if their voices are missing, a whole range of stories and experiences are excluded from cultural representation. That matters, because representation matters.

Women in the creative industries are empowering and inspiring not only the next generation of female creatives but the next generation of women. I hope that everyone will join me today in committing to celebrate them and their achievements, not just on International Women’s Day, but every day throughout the year.