TORONTO – The Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) on Wednesday released its 2023 Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Report containing 2022 data, which for the first time includes earnings data and also features interviews with members who have participated in training and networking opportunities for diverse writers.
The report is part of the WGC’s Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) Committee’s ongoing efforts to address issues of historic underrepresentation of diversity groups in Canadian television. The WGC defines diversity groups as Indigenous, Black, LGBTQ2S, people of colour and people with disabilities.
The new report provides WGC membership data from 2017 to 2022 and includes contract data from 58 live-action and 29 animated series that started production in 2022.
The report’s data shows some of the employment gains made by diverse screenwriters in 2022, while also revealing compensation gaps between diverse and non-diverse writers (defined by WGC as white, cisgender, heterosexual and non-disabled).
Looking at WGC membership data, the percentage of Indigenous writers and writers with disabilities who joined the guild in 2022 grew to 7 per cent each, up from 5 per cent and 4 per cent in 2021, respectively. The percentage of diverse members with intersectional identities joining the WGC has grown to 17 per cent in 2022 from 12 per cent in 2021.
“The percentage of WGC diverse writers who are working has increased steadily from 21% in 2018 to 38% in 2022. The increase is largely explained by a higher participation of writers of colour and Black writers,” says a press release outlining highlights of the report.
Writing credits for people of colour “have increased consistently” from 7 per cent in 2018 to 17 per cent in 2022, while the share of writing credits for Black writers increased from 3 per cent to 9.4 per cent during the same period, according to the press release. “In the case of LGBTQ2S screenwriters, writing credits recovered from a steady decrease and now sit at 17%,” the release says.
The share of Indigenous writers and writers with disabilities working on TV, however, remains low when compared to their overall population numbers, according to the release. “The percentage of Indigenous writers increased by half a percentage only to 2.5% in 2022. Similarly, the share of writers with disabilities continues to be markedly low (3%).”
When it comes to compensation, across every diversity category, the share of writers earning more than $200,000 is well below the 7.9 per cent of non-diverse writers in that category, the release says.
“In animation, there is a significant gap between the compensation of non-diverse and diverse writers. While non-diverse animation writers represent 22.9% of working writers and account for 15.4% of total earnings, diverse animation writers represent 8.6% of working writers but only account for 2.2% of total earnings,” the release reads.
