TORONTO – The Canada Media Fund (CMF) has unveiled a series of tangible measures that it pledged to put in place to increase women in key roles on CMF-funded productions.
The organization said Wednesday, on International Women's Day, that the initiatives will include concrete changes to the CMF’s guidelines and policies, a commitment to achieving gender parity in all juries that are put in place to evaluate projects, and support for third-party initiatives, among other measures to be implemented in the upcoming fiscal year and subsequently.
According to research conducted in different markets around the world and by the CMF’s own statistics, women are underrepresented in leadership categories in the screen-based industries: on average, for content the CMF invests in, women in leadership positions represent 17% of directors, 34% of writers and 39% of producers. A report entitled a Women in View on Screen submitted to the CRTC found that for 17 of the 29 series supported by the CMF in 2012-2013, representing a public investment of $39 million, not a single woman directed any of the 151 episodes.
“We hold the view that female-led stories and ideas are available to our content makers”, said CMF president and CEO Valerie Creighton, in a statement. “We believe that the talent and skill are out there. We only need to level the playing field, so new opportunities for women can be triggered. I’m confident the measures we are announcing today will trigger those opportunities.”
As such, the CMF pledged to implement the following initiatives in 2017-2018:
– Require that broadcasters target to commit 25% of their Performance Envelopes (in $ terms) and be required to commit a minimum of 15% of their Envelopes on projects that employ a requisite number of women in the key positions of producer, writer, showrunner, director (or a combination thereof).
– Carve out a portion of the team (studio and staff) criterion weight and reward projects in the Experimental Stream that are female-led to include CEO, producer and potentially other prevalent positions such as technical director, art director, senior programmer, designer and others.
– Amend the evaluation grids in selective programs in the Convergent Stream to add points for female-led positions.
– Strive to achieve gender parity in all juries that are put in place to evaluate projects received in the Experimental Stream.
– Develop and implement a “Director Job Placement Incentive,” the objective of which would be to provide eligible projects in the Convergent Stream with financial incentives to retain female directors in a shadowing/internship capacity.
– Participate in third-party gender balance initiatives that complement the CMF’s objectives.
– Partner with the unions and guilds to incentivize the industry to open up career paths in crew positions for women.
– Adjust its application process to include gender self-declaration.
– Monitor results and amend policies as required to achieve gender balance in all CMF programs by 2020.
– In 2018-2019, require that broadcasters target to commit 35% of their Envelopes (in $ terms) and be required to commit a minimum of 25% of their Envelopes to female-led projects.
– In 2019-2020, that target would increase to 50% and the requirement to 35%.
The CMF said that these initiatives are the first step to progressive and full implementation of what is considered balanced representation, wherein 40 to 60% of all content that it supports will be female-led.
Through financial contributions from the Government of Canada and Canada’s cable, satellite and IPTV distributors, the CMF fosters, develops, finances and promotes the production of Canadian content and applications for all audiovisual media platforms.
