gender inequality in screenwriting work natalie wreyford Gender Inequality in Screenwriting Work Natalie Wreyford Gender Inequality in Screenwriting Work Natalie Wreyford University of Southampton Southampton, UK ISBN 978-3-319-95731-9 ISBN 978-3-319-95732-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95732-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951790 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu- tional affiliations. Cover illustration: Gen Sadakane / EyeEm / Getty Images Cover design: Fatima Jamadar This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland For Honor & Seth A cknowledgements I am very grateful to all my research participants who gave their time and thoughts so generously. Your honesty and insights surpassed anything I could have hoped to get from my interviews. I would also like to say a huge thank you to my PhD supervisors, Dr Christina Scharff, whose wis- dom and insight guided me through the majority of my research, and Dr Bridget Conor, who gallantly took the reins with much needed expertise and encouragement in my final stages. Both of them have shown me such generosity and support and truly exemplify how rewarding it can be to work with feminist academics. I am very grateful to you both for your continued advice and friendship, and sincerely hope we can find ways to work together in the future. My thanks also to Professor Ros Gill for her early supervision and continued support and interest in my work. I am also very grateful to my examiners, Professor Mark Banks and Dr Stephanie Taylor, both of whose work was extremely influential on my thinking and whose wise feedback was invaluable. Thanks especially to Mark for your continued guidance. Thank you to Dr Shelley Cobb and Professor Linda Ruth Williams, who gave me my first full-time academic job on their project ‘Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary Film Culture in the UK’ and allowed me to work from home so that I could be both a mother and an academic. You have both been incredibly supportive and generous and the time has flown by. I hope this year won’t be the end of our working together, or our friendships. Thank you to my editor Lina Aboujieb for her support and guidance and to Ellie Freedman for always having the answers and reassurance I needed. Finally, thanks to King’s College London and in particular to the department of Culture, Media vii viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS and Creative Industries for providing a stimulating context and perfect home for my research and to my fellow PhD candidates who provided friendship, support, and debate that enriched my work and my experience, in particular Rachel O’Neill, Sara de Benedictis, Stefania Marghitu and Scarlett Brown. Writing this book would not have been possible without the support of my family. In particular, I want to thank my mum, Sheenagh Wreyford, who put me up to it in the first place and who has been inexhaustibly sup- portive and inspirational my whole life, and my dad, Brian Wreyford, who brought me up to question authority and fight for the underdog. Thanks to my husband, Nathan Williams, for his love, for going out to work every day and navigating the sudden intrusion of feminist academic thinking in his life. Enormous love and gratitude to my children, Honor and Seth, who are my sunshine and my bedrock and have shown me first-hand the ridiculousness of gender stereotypes as well as the dangers; and thanks to my step-daughter Ellie for the many feminist discussions about film and life in general. Lots of love and admiration to my sister Catherine and my niece Kiri—two women who have endured far more than their fair share of adversity in life and deserve some peace and happiness. I am very grateful to both SAGE Publications and Studies in the Maternal for allowing me to include in this book extracts from previously published articles: • Wreyford, Natalie. “Birds of a feather: informal recruitment practices and gendered outcomes for screenwriting work in the UK film industry.” The Sociological Review 63, no. 1_suppl: 84–96. Copyright © 2015. (SAGE Publications). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. • Wreyford, Natalie. 2013. “The Real Cost of Childcare; Motherhood and Flexible Creative Labour in the UK Film Industry-Review Essay.” Studies in the Maternal 5, no. 2 (2013): 1–22. The article can be accessed here: https://www.mamsie.bbk.ac.uk/articles/ abstract/10.16995/sim.26/. This book is dedicated to women screenwriters everywhere, especially those who have never written a word. c ontents 1 Introduction: The Extent of Gender Inequality in Film Screenwriting Work 1 2 Gendering the Screenwriter 17 3 Gender, Capital, and Getting In 53 4 The Gendered Dynamics of the Recruitment of Screenwriters 87 5 The Impact of Motherhood on Screenwriters 111 6 Being Outnumbered 147 7 Gendering Taste 169 8 Conclusion: Moving Beyond Numbers to Make Change Happen 193 Index 211 xi A A bout the uthor Natalie Wreyford is Research Fellow on ‘Calling the Shots: Women and contemporary UK film culture’ at the University of Southampton. She completed her PhD thesis on women screenwriters at King’s College London. Prior to that, she worked for many years in screenplay develop- ment in the UK film industry, including as a Senior Development Executive at the UK Film Council and at Granada Film. xiii