Some things have improved, but the fight for parity isn’t over, says Kate Kinninmont

Geena-Davies-WFTV

Remember TV in 1990? Mr Bean had just started, The Simpsons arrived from the US and Helen Rollason became the first woman to present Grandstand. Oh, and Women In Film & Television was founded.

Did we need it? You bet. In a speech at WFTV’s Christmas lunch in 1990, David Puttnam declared that women were just not cut out to be film or TV producers. Wielding power is difficult, he said, and raising finance is about “seduction” – a game to which men are better suited (!), plus they usually have supportive wives at home.

Even in 1990, this went down like a cup of cold sick. Some of the women present wrote to Broadcast: “May we suggest next year we invite Bernard Manning to talk. At least we’ll have an idea of what we’re getting.”

Back then, the BBC had never had a female channel controller nor head of drama. Female drama producers were still rare, and directors even scarcer.

But change was on the way. By 2000, Jane Root was BBC2 controller, Lorraine Heggessey ran BBC1 and Jane Tranter was head of drama. That same year, Dawn Airey became chief executive of Channel 5. Today, no one is surprised to find a woman running a television channel – or a big-spending department.

But women still earn less than men across the industry. Older women still disappear from screens and they’re squeezed out behind them too. Female TV directors remain rare: Directors UK found that just 13% of dramas in 2011-12 were directed by women, and only 2% of gameshows.

In October, WFTV and the BFI hosted Geena Davis, who presented her research showing that in Hollywood movies, men outnumber women 2:1 – and they’re more likely to keep their clothes on.

Research by Professor Lis Howell of City University and by the Global Media Monitoring Project points the same way: only about 24% of people on our TV screens are women, while the BBC appears to have abandoned its plan to train ‘Expert Women’.

WFTV intends to take up the challenge. Watch this space.

  • Kate Kinninmont is chief executive of Women In Film & TV

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