I’m a filmmaker and I’m gonna pitch you
a story that could change the world it
starts in the past and it ends in the
future but how it’s gonna turn out is
when I was just 1 year old president
lyndon b johnson signed to the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 title 7 into law
Equal Employment Opportunity for women
was now guaranteed it was revolutionary
it was the biggest legal step forward
for American women since we won the
right to vote in 1920 it meant my
generation of women could dream of
pursuing careers in whatever professions
we chose or could we turns out for many
of us title 7 was and still is just an
illusion especially in Hollywood the
land of illusions where I went to be a
film director but ended up making my
mark as a troublemaker I’m the one who
instigated the biggest industry-wide
investigation into discrimination
against women directors in Hollywood
history I exposed the legal infractions
that stand at the heart of the current
gender problem in America’s dream
machine infractions that are the killers
of dreams when I was a little girl my
favorite thing to do was a dream growing
up near the rainforest in Puerto Rico
and the dunes of Cape Cod I had vivid
dreams watching my first films in movie
theaters felt a lot like dreaming I was
captivated at age 14 I saw swept away a
movie directed by a woman named Lena
Verret Miller and that’s what greenlit
my dream to become a film director by my
20s I was relentlessly pursuing that
dream in Hollywood starting as a student
in a five-year dress
ding program at UCLA’s graduate film
school thanks to another law title 9
half my class was men and half my class
was women still I should have seen
trouble ahead almost a hundred percent
of the films we studied were directed by
men and virtually all our professors
were men nevertheless I was confident
that with hard work and determination I
would soon join the pantheon of film
directors I admired so much at
graduation
the legendary Francis Ford Coppola
handed me my Master of Fine Arts diploma
really really didn’t think I’d need it I
was graduating at the top of my class
carrying an armful of writing and
directing Awards I was handed two
million dollars to direct my first
feature film in England with a-list
actors and a top British crew my film
when Saturday comes screened at can and
got theatrical distribution I signed
with the William Morris Agency in LA and
was attached to direct several films it
was one of the best years of my life it
was 1995 and I was ready to launch well
who could have guessed that 1995 would
be the year the number of female
director hires hit its all-time peak for
the next 15 years that number and my
career would go into steady decline I
would never work again as a paid feature
film director I’d never direct a
prime-time TV show and I was dropped by
my agency I watched as men who haven’t
directed a feature film and a half my
training became wealthy and sought-after
TV directors I watched as my male
classmates and peers became the
cinematic voices of our time believe me
I know the direct
profession is fiercely competitive for
guys too but as Manohla Dargis wrote in
the New York Times
while individual men struggle in the
industry women struggle as a group I
became part of a lost generation of
female voices in American cinema and
television marginalized as a group yet
isolated from each other we blamed
ourselves for our individual failures
but deep down we wondered could it be
the industry that was betraying us
failing us cut to 2011
I turned my director’s chair toward
activism here are the statistics that
fueled my anger in 2012 women directed
only 13% of TV shows just 4% of studio
features and a staggering 1% of the most
lucrative category of directing top
commercials men were directing almost
100% of our entertainment media women
didn’t have a chance for equal
opportunity or fair competition and
women directors of color not even on the
map turns out that Hollywood was and
still is the worst violator of title 7
of any industry in the United States
even the coal mining industry does
better it was time to become a
troublemaker I had to blow the whistle
my fight was not just about me or the
few thousand other women directors
missing out on jobs
it was my realization that the absence
of women directors in Hollywood was
tantamount to the censoring and
silencing of female voices everywhere
entertainment media is our nation’s most
culturally influential global export it
impacts the way people think and treat
each other all around the world without
equal participation of women’s voices in
our storytelling
the world is getting a skewed
perspective of reality leaving a
two-class society cleaved by gender what
about our nation’s founding ideals of
equality and justice what about the
promises of our Constitution I decided
to make the personal political let me
just give you a picture of how Hollywood
works with my first feature film under
my belt I spent hundreds of hours on set
preparing to direct the TV show law and
order but the executive producer gave my
hoped for episode to his stepson instead
I asked him why he thought so few women
directors were getting hired and how to
fix it and he said it’s a real conundrum
we just don’t know what to do about it
and I thought a conundrum why don’t you
just start by hiring me the problem
seemed so simple to solve hire more
women and what the heck was going on
with title seven anyway I decided to
make the personal political I headed to
the courthouse in downtown LA to seek to
search for legal precedent to challenge
Hollywood and I learned about six
courageous women directors who thirty
years before had used title seven to
launch a class action lawsuit against
several major studios the work of the
original six and the pressure of that
legal action sent the number of female
director hires soaring from one half of
one percent to 16 percent in just 10
years
from 1985 to 1995 the very year I
graduated so the uptick in numbers
didn’t last long enough to help me but
it indicated a real industry
vulnerability to legal action
unfortunately the law moves slowly and I
wanted to move fast
I needed to trigger a paradigm shift in
the way people think about women
directors
I wondered if I turned the spotlight on
title 7 in Hollywood could it become the
small intervention that sparks a major
social transformation in the age of
high-speed communication and networking
I thought so
so for the next two years I articulated
the problem as a civil rights crisis I
started a blog and used social media to
to marshal a community of women where
there had been none before I researched
and wrote a legal brief
I wrote article after article exposing
the problem from every possible angle
and I reached out to mainstream
journalists to spread the word finally
when the New York Times called my work a
veritable crusade I knew I was getting
somewhere by 2013 I was elected the
first ever women directors category
representative in my union the Directors
Guild of America with a small group of
brave women directors we spoke out and
we produced the biggest summit for women
directors ever held little did I know
how entrenched our male-dominated DGA
had become the guild leadership
retaliated they forbade us from taking
photographs at our summit and they
confiscated our contact lists they
mandated bylaws to silence us and shut
down our activism we were blacklisted in
the very union that is supposed to
protect our rights and we were not alone
across the industry women who speak out
are out Title 7 can only work we’re
speaking out is possible I mean think
about it if you can’t get a job because
you’re a woman
but invoking the law to defend yourself
means getting blacklisted well that
means that law doesn’t work it was time
for a radical plot twist and a new cast
of characters entered the ACLU in the
spring of 2013 I I took
evidence to the American Civil Liberties
Union and their senior attorneys took
the time to listen they launched a
massive two-year campaign of research
advocacy and media awareness then they
sent a 15 page letter to the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission of the
United States Department of Justice the
EEOC calling for an industry-wide
federal investigation into systemic
discrimination against women directors
in May 2015 the New York Times published
that letter in full it was
groundbreaking five months later the
EEOC answered the call the investigation
it wasn’t just news it was front page
news and it rocked the industry agencies
and unions scrambled to cover their
tracks the studios and networks fell
silent by 2016 it was reported that all
six major studios had been officially
charged with rampant title seven
violations and were in settlement talks
with the federal government that’s the
good news
the bad news is almost three years later
we still don’t know the outcome the EEOC
functions in total confidentiality it’s
it’s like a black box information can go
in but it can’t come out so even though
we women are being represented by our
government once again we aren’t invited
to the table to help design our future
so I really can’t predict how this movie
will end but like all good blockbusters
the plot has thickened thanks to the
work of the ACLU and the EEOC speaking
out became safer in October 2017 almost
two years to the day after the
investigation the New York Times and The
New Yorker published the expose x’ that
would galvanize the me2 movement
Harvey Weinstein became the star of his
own greatest horror film ever and the
proxy for Hollywood’s way of doing
business this boy’s club industry
functions on a system of personal
relationships and reciprocity that keeps
women sidelined paid less and vulnerable
to exploitation like trading jobs for
sex understanding the culture of
misogyny and the structures that keep
women shut out makes fighting back
possible thankfully people are speaking
out their voices need to be heard
remember the stepson that directed that
Law & Order episode he turned that break
into a ten mill
20 year career and was second in line to
become the president of my Union the
Directors Guild of America it all ended
in 2016 when he pled pled guilty to
charges of pot child pornography
we need to ask ourselves whose law whose
order abuse is against the vulnerable
sexual harassment and assault in the
workplace are caused by power imbalances
that are rooted in employment
discrimination the way our federal
government stands up to Hollywood now to
make sure title 7 is enforced can change
everything but the stakes are high
Hollywood studios pumped hundreds of
millions of dollars each year into the
pockets of lobbying groups in Washington
DC to represent their interests and
avoid the very government intervention
that could shift to the status quo and
it’s not just our government’s problem
it’s not just our government’s job to
fix this broken system we should all be
part of interrupting Hollywood
I believe that 20 years from now we will
see this as a time of extraordinary
change the paradigm shift I hoped for is
happening the signs are everywhere
for example the world’s largest
advertiser Proctor and Gamble that spent
7 billion dollars on ads last year has
pledged to have half of its commercials
[Applause]
that is real action and real change
requires real action real distribution
of jobs to women and real enforcement of
title seven title seven is a
revolutionary law it is the intervention
that could spark a major social
transformation because equal
participation of women in our cultural
narrative means equal participation of
[Applause]
[Music]
let’s enforce this existing law now to
open the floodgates to a great new wave
of female voices and creative vision
let’s use it to move humanity toward a
more just and equitable future through
the stories we tell and the people who
tell them and above all let’s use it so
that people everywhere can believe that
each one of our voices has the potential
to change the world because we are the
stories we tell thank you [Applause]
a story that could change the world it
starts in the past and it ends in the
future but how it’s gonna turn out is
when I was just 1 year old president
lyndon b johnson signed to the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 title 7 into law
Equal Employment Opportunity for women
was now guaranteed it was revolutionary
it was the biggest legal step forward
for American women since we won the
right to vote in 1920 it meant my
generation of women could dream of
pursuing careers in whatever professions
we chose or could we turns out for many
of us title 7 was and still is just an
illusion especially in Hollywood the
land of illusions where I went to be a
film director but ended up making my
mark as a troublemaker I’m the one who
instigated the biggest industry-wide
investigation into discrimination
against women directors in Hollywood
history I exposed the legal infractions
that stand at the heart of the current
gender problem in America’s dream
machine infractions that are the killers
of dreams when I was a little girl my
favorite thing to do was a dream growing
up near the rainforest in Puerto Rico
and the dunes of Cape Cod I had vivid
dreams watching my first films in movie
theaters felt a lot like dreaming I was
captivated at age 14 I saw swept away a
movie directed by a woman named Lena
Verret Miller and that’s what greenlit
my dream to become a film director by my
20s I was relentlessly pursuing that
dream in Hollywood starting as a student
in a five-year dress
ding program at UCLA’s graduate film
school thanks to another law title 9
half my class was men and half my class
was women still I should have seen
trouble ahead almost a hundred percent
of the films we studied were directed by
men and virtually all our professors
were men nevertheless I was confident
that with hard work and determination I
would soon join the pantheon of film
directors I admired so much at
graduation
the legendary Francis Ford Coppola
handed me my Master of Fine Arts diploma
really really didn’t think I’d need it I
was graduating at the top of my class
carrying an armful of writing and
directing Awards I was handed two
million dollars to direct my first
feature film in England with a-list
actors and a top British crew my film
when Saturday comes screened at can and
got theatrical distribution I signed
with the William Morris Agency in LA and
was attached to direct several films it
was one of the best years of my life it
was 1995 and I was ready to launch well
who could have guessed that 1995 would
be the year the number of female
director hires hit its all-time peak for
the next 15 years that number and my
career would go into steady decline I
would never work again as a paid feature
film director I’d never direct a
prime-time TV show and I was dropped by
my agency I watched as men who haven’t
directed a feature film and a half my
training became wealthy and sought-after
TV directors I watched as my male
classmates and peers became the
cinematic voices of our time believe me
I know the direct
profession is fiercely competitive for
guys too but as Manohla Dargis wrote in
the New York Times
while individual men struggle in the
industry women struggle as a group I
became part of a lost generation of
female voices in American cinema and
television marginalized as a group yet
isolated from each other we blamed
ourselves for our individual failures
but deep down we wondered could it be
the industry that was betraying us
failing us cut to 2011
I turned my director’s chair toward
activism here are the statistics that
fueled my anger in 2012 women directed
only 13% of TV shows just 4% of studio
features and a staggering 1% of the most
lucrative category of directing top
commercials men were directing almost
100% of our entertainment media women
didn’t have a chance for equal
opportunity or fair competition and
women directors of color not even on the
map turns out that Hollywood was and
still is the worst violator of title 7
of any industry in the United States
even the coal mining industry does
better it was time to become a
troublemaker I had to blow the whistle
my fight was not just about me or the
few thousand other women directors
missing out on jobs
it was my realization that the absence
of women directors in Hollywood was
tantamount to the censoring and
silencing of female voices everywhere
entertainment media is our nation’s most
culturally influential global export it
impacts the way people think and treat
each other all around the world without
equal participation of women’s voices in
our storytelling
the world is getting a skewed
perspective of reality leaving a
two-class society cleaved by gender what
about our nation’s founding ideals of
equality and justice what about the
promises of our Constitution I decided
to make the personal political let me
just give you a picture of how Hollywood
works with my first feature film under
my belt I spent hundreds of hours on set
preparing to direct the TV show law and
order but the executive producer gave my
hoped for episode to his stepson instead
I asked him why he thought so few women
directors were getting hired and how to
fix it and he said it’s a real conundrum
we just don’t know what to do about it
and I thought a conundrum why don’t you
just start by hiring me the problem
seemed so simple to solve hire more
women and what the heck was going on
with title seven anyway I decided to
make the personal political I headed to
the courthouse in downtown LA to seek to
search for legal precedent to challenge
Hollywood and I learned about six
courageous women directors who thirty
years before had used title seven to
launch a class action lawsuit against
several major studios the work of the
original six and the pressure of that
legal action sent the number of female
director hires soaring from one half of
one percent to 16 percent in just 10
years
from 1985 to 1995 the very year I
graduated so the uptick in numbers
didn’t last long enough to help me but
it indicated a real industry
vulnerability to legal action
unfortunately the law moves slowly and I
wanted to move fast
I needed to trigger a paradigm shift in
the way people think about women
directors
I wondered if I turned the spotlight on
title 7 in Hollywood could it become the
small intervention that sparks a major
social transformation in the age of
high-speed communication and networking
I thought so
so for the next two years I articulated
the problem as a civil rights crisis I
started a blog and used social media to
to marshal a community of women where
there had been none before I researched
and wrote a legal brief
I wrote article after article exposing
the problem from every possible angle
and I reached out to mainstream
journalists to spread the word finally
when the New York Times called my work a
veritable crusade I knew I was getting
somewhere by 2013 I was elected the
first ever women directors category
representative in my union the Directors
Guild of America with a small group of
brave women directors we spoke out and
we produced the biggest summit for women
directors ever held little did I know
how entrenched our male-dominated DGA
had become the guild leadership
retaliated they forbade us from taking
photographs at our summit and they
confiscated our contact lists they
mandated bylaws to silence us and shut
down our activism we were blacklisted in
the very union that is supposed to
protect our rights and we were not alone
across the industry women who speak out
are out Title 7 can only work we’re
speaking out is possible I mean think
about it if you can’t get a job because
you’re a woman
but invoking the law to defend yourself
means getting blacklisted well that
means that law doesn’t work it was time
for a radical plot twist and a new cast
of characters entered the ACLU in the
spring of 2013 I I took
evidence to the American Civil Liberties
Union and their senior attorneys took
the time to listen they launched a
massive two-year campaign of research
advocacy and media awareness then they
sent a 15 page letter to the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission of the
United States Department of Justice the
EEOC calling for an industry-wide
federal investigation into systemic
discrimination against women directors
in May 2015 the New York Times published
that letter in full it was
groundbreaking five months later the
EEOC answered the call the investigation
it wasn’t just news it was front page
news and it rocked the industry agencies
and unions scrambled to cover their
tracks the studios and networks fell
silent by 2016 it was reported that all
six major studios had been officially
charged with rampant title seven
violations and were in settlement talks
with the federal government that’s the
good news
the bad news is almost three years later
we still don’t know the outcome the EEOC
functions in total confidentiality it’s
it’s like a black box information can go
in but it can’t come out so even though
we women are being represented by our
government once again we aren’t invited
to the table to help design our future
so I really can’t predict how this movie
will end but like all good blockbusters
the plot has thickened thanks to the
work of the ACLU and the EEOC speaking
out became safer in October 2017 almost
two years to the day after the
investigation the New York Times and The
New Yorker published the expose x’ that
would galvanize the me2 movement
Harvey Weinstein became the star of his
own greatest horror film ever and the
proxy for Hollywood’s way of doing
business this boy’s club industry
functions on a system of personal
relationships and reciprocity that keeps
women sidelined paid less and vulnerable
to exploitation like trading jobs for
sex understanding the culture of
misogyny and the structures that keep
women shut out makes fighting back
possible thankfully people are speaking
out their voices need to be heard
remember the stepson that directed that
Law & Order episode he turned that break
into a ten mill
20 year career and was second in line to
become the president of my Union the
Directors Guild of America it all ended
in 2016 when he pled pled guilty to
charges of pot child pornography
we need to ask ourselves whose law whose
order abuse is against the vulnerable
sexual harassment and assault in the
workplace are caused by power imbalances
that are rooted in employment
discrimination the way our federal
government stands up to Hollywood now to
make sure title 7 is enforced can change
everything but the stakes are high
Hollywood studios pumped hundreds of
millions of dollars each year into the
pockets of lobbying groups in Washington
DC to represent their interests and
avoid the very government intervention
that could shift to the status quo and
it’s not just our government’s problem
it’s not just our government’s job to
fix this broken system we should all be
part of interrupting Hollywood
I believe that 20 years from now we will
see this as a time of extraordinary
change the paradigm shift I hoped for is
happening the signs are everywhere
for example the world’s largest
advertiser Proctor and Gamble that spent
7 billion dollars on ads last year has
pledged to have half of its commercials
[Applause]
that is real action and real change
requires real action real distribution
of jobs to women and real enforcement of
title seven title seven is a
revolutionary law it is the intervention
that could spark a major social
transformation because equal
participation of women in our cultural
narrative means equal participation of
[Applause]
[Music]
let’s enforce this existing law now to
open the floodgates to a great new wave
of female voices and creative vision
let’s use it to move humanity toward a
more just and equitable future through
the stories we tell and the people who
tell them and above all let’s use it so
that people everywhere can believe that
each one of our voices has the potential
to change the world because we are the
stories we tell thank you [Applause]
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