How Underrepresented TV Writers Have Confronted Extra Inequities Throughout The Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic and final summer season’s racial uprisings created additional challenges and problems for TV writers from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds, and progress has been incremental at finest, in line with a brand new survey from the Assume Tank for Inclusion and Fairness, a coalition of underrepresented TV writers.

For the third consecutive yr, the group carried out a wide-ranging survey of underrepresented TV writers in Hollywood, in response to a scarcity of complete knowledge in regards to the challenges they face when attempting to maneuver up within the business. This yr’s version of the survey additionally aimed to evaluate what results the pandemic and final summer season’s racial reckoning had on the work of underrepresented TV writers.

Total, the survey, which included 1,226 working TV writers, discovered that almost all TV writers’ rooms now embrace extra ladies and BIPOC writers. However disabled writers, LGBTQ writers and lower-level writers over the age of 50 stay severely underrepresented.

And throughout the board, underrepresented writers stay concentrated on the backside, the survey discovered, indicating that Hollywood could be prioritizing “variety,” however isn’t but prioritizing “inclusion.” Most writers within the survey mentioned that the folks main their reveals didn’t come from underrepresented teams. This implies that regardless of some indicators of progress within the business, not sufficient underrepresented writers are advancing of their careers or reaching positions of energy the place they will form how tales are informed and alter the tradition of the business.

“It is a mountain, and we’re nonetheless at base camp,” TV author and TTIE co-founder Angela Harvey mentioned at a digital occasion Tuesday introducing the survey’s findings.

Underrepresented writers additionally proceed to face discrimination, microaggressions and a disproportionate share of profession penalties for elevating points within the office, in line with the survey. They had been about twice as more likely to be reprimanded or fired after talking out in opposition to problematic content material on their reveals, in comparison with overrepresented writers.

Underrepresented writers had been additionally almost twice as seemingly “to have pitched concepts that had been rejected, solely to have one other author pitch the identical thought and be accepted.” And greater than 1 / 4 of underrepresented writers within the survey mentioned they “had been ‘at all times or typically’ talked over or interrupted” within the writers’ room.

The pandemic and the following shift to distant work and digital conferences have created further obstacles for underrepresented TV writers, in line with the survey.

Many writers reported feeling overworked and burned out however not having the ability to communicate up about it. Additionally they mentioned they felt much less heard in conferences and brainstorming periods carried out over video convention.

Within the leisure business, many job alternatives come from in-person networking, which largely stopped with the onset of the pandemic. In accordance with the survey, “nearly 40% of underrepresented writers attribute their first jobs to spontaneous social interplay and water cooler conversations,” so the shortage of in-person networking alternatives might create setbacks for TV writers, particularly these simply beginning their careers.

Lastly, in line with earlier surveys, many underrepresented writers reported being sexually harassed or bullied within the office. TTIE’s report warns that “whereas overt sexual harassment could also be more durable to get away with following #MeToo and #TimesUpHollywood, covert types of harassment and bullying are nonetheless prevalent within the office, particularly with the shift to digital rooms.” 

The survey’s findings additionally present that whereas final summer season’s nationwide reckoning over race could have put renewed stress on Hollywood leaders to construct a extra inclusive business, the precise experiences of TV writers of shade have been a lot slower to alter.

Harvey mentioned she has had extra conferences with executives. Nonetheless, she has discovered that they need tales about communities of shade that “match right into a sure field” and depend on acquainted narratives and tropes. TTIE’s report notes that “some writers feared {that a} push for inclusion over the previous yr has led to extra underrepresented characters and storylines, however not essentially ones which are extra nuanced, advanced, and higher representations.”

A number of survey respondents expressed warning and skepticism in regards to the diploma to which final summer season’s racial reckoning will push the business ahead.

“Advocating for sure varieties of tales, for characters to have company and extra actual property, with administrators, I’ve gotten a variety of lip service about telling sure tales,” one respondent mentioned. “It doesn’t really feel as progressive as I’d have hoped. Or as real. Or prefer it’s going to proceed.” 

“You’re being informed that tales about racial injustice… [were] actually welcomed,” a respondent who recognized as a lady of shade mentioned within the survey. “However then, when these tales had been pitched or placed on the board, they had been type of dismissed as being too racial or too on-the-nose.”

One other survey respondent mentioned that after they tried to jot down a Black character for his or her present, their supervisors “had been attempting to ask me to make him extra Black, that means extra stereotypically Black, with out saying as a lot… I wrote him as an actual Black child, not a stereotype.”

TTIE’s founders mentioned the survey’s findings reveal that hiring underrepresented writers won’t ever be sufficient if the tradition round them isn’t altering.

“Even when the numbers are bettering, objectively, there hasn’t been sufficient work to alter the tradition and context,” mentioned TTIE co-founder Tawal Panyacosit Jr. “Thus, we’re bringing underrepresented writers right into a damaged system.”

And the work of constructing a extra inclusive Hollywood needs to be intentional, not merely performative, they mentioned.

“Writers’ rooms do very intentional analysis in terms of issues like, in the event you’re on a regulation present, you do tons of analysis on the regulation. Should you’re on a medical present, you do tons of analysis on medical. However there must be that very same intentionality by way of analysis on tradition and communities, and that’s not taking place,” TTIE co-founder Shireen Razack mentioned. “If we hold perpetuating the identical stereotypes that we’ve discovered from media, then nothing’s going to alter.”

Learn TTIE’s full report right here.