Gender Neutral Awards

No no no no no no no.

Would just result in men being awarded all the time and women being ignored, in the way that happens for directors and other creatives. Acting is the only place where women are consistently awarded, other than maybe costumes, hair and makeup.

Just rename the categories if they have to. Female and male refer to sex, not gender, so it can go by anatomy. Or those who do not identify with a gender can choose which.

Honestly, there just aren't that many people in the world who feel like they don't identify with either gender. And of those that do, how many of them are actors in contention for major awards? Women make up 50% of the world - probably more than 50% of actors - and I don't think it's a good idea to sacrifice their ability to win awards for the sake of a few individuals. Plus it would likely mean even less strong roles being written for women, as they have less chance of winning awards, and overall would just mean less people getting recognition as there would be half the amount of winners.

That's not my perception, and I've not noticed anyone else having that perception. If anything, a crowd with 17% women is going to draw attention to the imbalance.

I've always kind of liked the way the Drama League award is given in the States, one Distinguished Performance per year, and you can only win it once. Over the last few years it seems fairly evenly split male/female, plays/musicals. Up until the mid 90's or so the Screen Actors Guild used to give out a Lifetime Achievement Award annually and then they started to add competitive awards. Some of the American Equity Awards also seem gender neutral too. But let's face it people aren't really boasting about those are they??

Considering the dearth of parts for women generally, and the lack of representation that sometimes occurs I suspect it could lead to male domination in some regards. The Grammys combined some categories a few years back and that certainly seems to bear out that possibility.

Less awards also means less excitement, less buzz, shorter award ceremonies, less opportunity for advertising etc. How would that be responded to?

I don't really like the idea of Gender Neutral. I like the way the Emmy's are doing it where any non specific people can choose which catagory they would rather be put into. Especially as, if we use the Oliviers as an example, there are currently 8 acting awards. Why half that and only have four awards when you can recognise more people for their brilliant performances. It also does make it fairer are some people giving brilliant performances may be missed out for the sake of a famous person or something like that.

Tricky one this one. As time goes on we shall have women play men and men play women. O my, we already do. So are women now having more roles and so more of a chance to win a prize? On balance I would go for Best Performance and this would allow for all the complications of identification, sexuality and gender.

*googles Asia Kate Dillon*



*carries on with day*

Or was it speaking 50% of the time??? My memory is fuzzy on it too.

*sigh* There are so many bits of research on this subject it's very easy to mix them up. But basically the evidence is that the under-representation of women (and ethnic minorities, BTW) is so normal that people genuinely don't notice it until you start very consciously counting. Which is why saying 'it's fine - we're gender neutral now!' is not a good idea - our biases are very often unconscious and unnoticed.

I mean, who'd of thought in this day and age there'd still be disparities in the numbers of male and female writers winning awards? The publishing industry is actively female-dominated, and you can't tell male from female writing just by reading it, and I'm sure no-one believes men are better writers than women. But those disparities exist.

It is just a case of confirmation bias - the selection of only those pieces of evidence that confirm your pre-exisiting views. Or put more simply, people believe any old rubbish if it supports their case.

If the awards are really gender neutral then there is no problem at all if one gender dominates for a period - it doesn't matter - the awards are just on merit.

Well, I said REALLY gender neutral. But anyway, give an example of a gender neutral award where the winners have obviously not reflected the gender distribution of people eligible for that award.

One woman has won an Oscar for directing, compared to eighty-eight times a man has won. Whilst there are definitely more male directors than female directors, the ratio is nowhere near that high.

(As an aside — and one I'll put at the start of my comment because I want to get it out of the way — I actually find it quite insultingly sexist that anyone would read something to the effect of "men see a crowd with 17% women and think the numbers are even" and not instantly dismiss it as obviously wrong. It's an utterly preposterous assertion and nobody should be giving it any credence whatsoever. It's up there with the assertion of some vegans that meat stays in the intestines for seven years. It shouldn't need pointing out that it's bollocks.)

Anyway, back to the main subject. It's not even that people don't notice they're unbalanced. People do notice they're unbalanced: that's why the research is done in the first place. The problem is that people notice they're unbalanced and do it anyway. All characters were white and male by default and only varied from that when there was a specific need for it. That strikes me as quite bizarre.

I can only assume it ties in to the long-held and only gradually diminishing belief that women are in some way boring to watch. I mentioned some time ago (possibly on the old forum) that when Lauren Faust was creating the characters for the 2010 incarnation of the My Little Pony franchise she wanted to create an adventurous world filled with strong and dynamic female characters for female viewers because when she'd been a child there were no such characters. There were shows led by female characters that were exclusively aimed at girls and watched by almost nobody, and there were shows led by male characters that were aimed at boys but watched by anyone with a measurable IQ. It was conventional and unchallenged wisdom — and I use that word quite wrongly — that girls meant dolls and fairies while adventure and excitement required boys. It's not that people were unaware what they were doing. They knew exactly what they were doing. It's just that what they were doing was stupid, as Faust and others have demonstrated: the My Little Pony show she created is coming up to its seventh season (taking it up to 169 episodes) and there's a movie coming out in a few months, and its almost entirely female cast hasn't harmed its fortunes in the slightest.

Just the other day I was thinking about Disney films and the way their main animation studio has done such a grand job of dealing with female characters. (I'm concentrating on animation here because it's my passion. I've no doubt that live action is similar.) Starting from The Princess and The Frog they've had seven major films. Five of those films have had strong and resourceful female protagonists and many powerful female characters among the principals. Only one — Big Hero 6 — has been distinctly skewed in favour of male characters. Disney is certainly under no impression that female characters can't hold an audience's attention.

But I can't think of any other major animation studio that has close to half of its films with female protagonists. That's obviously a problem, and it's not something that's going to be changed by spouting made-up statistics that deny the actual issue. It has never been the case that the people in charge have been unaware of the male-heavy bias of their work. The problem is that too many of them think that's what is required in order to be successful. Altering that attitude requires everybody to understand the real problem and to be on board with the idea of trying a different approach, and when someone comes along and insults people on their own side with comments like "I mean, congratulations on your personal ability to understand what half-and-half actually looks like" it's exacerbating the problem, not addressing it.