In this video, we will discuss gender and management issues. But before we start, tell me: what percentage of Hollywood film dialogues do you think are spoken by women? 60, 50, 40, 30%? It’s actually 30%! According to the Center for the Study of Women in Television, Film and New Media, this is the percentage of dialogues spoken by women in Hollywood films. A study by Polygraph goes even further, finding that in only 9 films out of 300 women speak most of the dialogue. But Hollywood movies aren't the only ones, as, in some Disney movies such as Pocahontas and the Little Mermaid, men speak 70% of the dialogue. When we include age in this equation, we can also see that women tend to have fewer and fewer roles as they become older, unlike men. Let’s look at a worldwide UN study that analysed dialogues in the most popular films made by companies in wealthy countries. These countries include Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the United States and the United Kingdom. Although women speak more than 35% of the dialogues in films made in countries such as Brazil, the United Kingdom and South Korea, this percentage may be lower in other countries — 24% in India, for example. The media play a particularly important role in this imbalance, as their visibility and access to a wide audience greatly influence how people perceive gender and what they expect from men and women. According to UN Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka in 1995, under the Beijing Platform for Action, 189 governments had adopted an international roadmap for gender equality that, among other things, called on the media to avoid the stereotypical and degrading representation of women. A study carried out two decades later showed that the worldwide film industry still has a long way to go in changing the way women are represented and increasing the speaking time of women as compared with men. According to Martha M. Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women’s Representation in Television and Cinema in the United States, only 24% of the films made in 2017 had a woman as the central character, compared with 29% in 2016, for example. In the same year, however, there were slightly more female roles (34%, compared with 32% in 2016). We have analysed the film industry because it is highly representative of gender equality issues. This is a useful example of how women are perceived, but this perception is also found in other areas such as management positions. Although women are not a minority of the population as a whole, they are significantly under-represented in professional contexts, particularly at the higher levels of management. Out of 500 companies in the United States, for example, only 4% have female CEOs. This equates to 21 CEOs out of 500. In 2021, the number of women leading Fortune 500 companies reached an all-time high of 41. And yet, this new record still only equates to women representing about 8% of the CEOs of the country’s biggest public companies. Studies on gender equality and communication also show that women in management have fewer opportunities to participate, and participate less. When they try to participate, they are more likely to be interrupted than men. And when they participate, they are less likely to be recognised and viewed positively than men. When we look at the OECD employment database, we can see that there is still a significant gender pay gap in most countries. Men earn more than 30% more than women in countries such as South Korea and Ethiopia. Even in countries often seen as egalitarian, such as Denmark and Norway, a gender pay gap still exists. This is still much to be done, even though we can see that this gender differentiation has decreased over the last 15 years. When we examine gender diversity at the different company management levels, it is very clear that women are significantly under-represented the higher we look in the management structure. And in many companies, the number of women in middle management positions upwards drops drastically. Even in companies that have 50% women holding junior management positions, the number of women drops by about 20% at the executive management level. Compared with their male colleagues, women are 21% less likely to be promoted from junior to the lower management levels. This disparity increases as high as at corporate officer-level positions and higher, and there are even fewer women of colour.
