Inequality in the Film Industry in the UK

Inequality in the Film Industry in the UK
Name
Institution
Inequality in the Film Industry in the UK
Part 1
Research Question, Context, and Justification
The research by Natalie Wreyford is about “informal recruitment practices and gendered outcomes for screenwriting work” with the focus on the UK film industry. At the start of the article, Wreyford notes there is enough evidence that few films have women in important creative positions and the situation is not changing very little. The author notes that the discrimination in the film industry affects women and other minority groups and it has become so common that even the people affected most are learning to live with it as a norm (2015, p93). Wreyford chooses to focus on gender inequality that is prevalent in creative professions by examining the dynamics of “informal, networked recruitment processes” (2015, p84-85). Therefore, the research question is: what are the informal, networked recruitment processes that contribute to inequality in creative professions? The work focuses on the issue of inequality in the recruitment process where networks and referrals are the major means of recruitments. Wreyford stresses on the issue of inequality in the film industry not only among women but also among other marginalized groups. She notes that the industry is dominated by white middle-class to high-class men and other players in the industry have accepted that as the norm. The industry has sustained the idea that it is not possible to get a good screenwriter if it is not someone you already know or someone that has been referred by a person one trusts.
Throughout the article, Wreyford justices her study by making a reference to research that has been done on the issue of inequality in the creative professions. According to the argument of Wreyford (2015, p93), there is discrimination along physical ability, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age, and class because there is lack of trust in the ability to deliver quality. These views are supported by Bhavnani (2007, p21) who argues that the minority ethnic people find it difficult to break into the film industry that is dominated by white middle-aged men.
The Research Approach
Wreyford takes a qualitative approach to the research. Her concern was not on the ratio of men to women in the screenwriting job but on why there is discrimination in the recruitment process. She decided to interview some of the employers in the industry with a large number of her interviewees being women so that she could get their input on why they believe the industry functions as it does. She also performed a literature review of past articles on the issue and compared the works of those authors so that she could have multiple viewpoints.
Wreyford starts her work by reviewing past articles. She then uses 40 semi-structured interviews to have interviews with the screenwriters and their employers. In semi-structured interviews, pre-determined questions are used but the order in which they are asked is determined by the interviewer so that they can ask what they feel is most appropriate at a time (Van Teijlingen, 2014, n.p). Through these interviews, Wreyford wanted to determine why there were few female screenwriters in the UK film industry compared to the males.
The sample was made up of 23 women and 17 men. Of them, 34 were white and 6 were non-white. The focus of the researcher was on determining how “industry-wide discourses” contributed to gender inequality within the sector. Wreyford explains that most of the employers were located in London while the screenwriters were distributed countrywide. She fails to mention any difficulties she might have encountered in reaching the interviewees or differences in opinion that might have let to conflicting results. Additionally, she did not discuss any ethical issues that her research might have raised probably because she believed there were none in the research. However, I find this very perplexing to believe.
Why the Researcher took that Approach
The choice of using semi-structured interviews to establish the reason for gender inequality was because the researchers wanted to get firsthand information from the industry players themselves. She believed hearing from them and comparing with what has been done in the past research works would give her a solid foundation on which to build and come up with meaningful conclusions on the root cause of the problem.
The researcher also decided to use more women in the interview as compared to men. This strategy would help in understanding the problem from the perspective of the women because they are the most affected. With this approach, the researcher hoped to be able to identify the dominant discourse. Through interviews with the participants, the researcher hoped that she would be able to identify the recurring patterns in their talks so that she could be able to identify the more prevalent issues (2015, p88). The researcher hoped that this approach would help her to explain why employers prefer risk reduction strategies in their recruitment processes such as hiring through their personal contacts or the opinions of those they trust or consider powerful. The researcher believed that through using this strategy, she would be able to explain how the riskiness of the environment has contributed to reliance on homophily as the way of achieving trust. Through these, the research she hoped to tell how the strategies work together to deny females equal opportunities as their male counterparts in the film industry.
The researcher interviewed various participants and got their opinions on the matter. To ensure that each had their own independent contributions, he interviewed them independently to ensure they never purposely agreed with one another. Along the way, the researcher ensured that he backed up all interview responses with a literary resource to affirm the point made to ensure authenticity. The researcher ensured that she got various angles from different interviewees on the same topic to ensure that the information she got was widely agreed upon. This way, it was position to have a commonly agreed upon position.
Link between Approaches and Findings
As noted earlier, the approach the researcher took involved review of past literature and data collection through semi-structure interviews. Through these, the researcher was able to come up with conclusions on the causes on the inequality in the creative professions. She concludes that the film industry is full of trust issues, discrimination and stereotyping and the practices happen almost on a daily basis. These are supported by the interview results she got. From her interaction with the female respondents, she concludes that they people in the industry have gotten used to the norm to the extent that they have accepted it even it works against some of them. The writer was able to study the responses of the screenwriters and determine the mechanisms that uphold the gender biasness and other forms of inequalities in the recruitment process. The researcher has been able show that in high risk projects and situations of uncertainty, people prefer to use risk reduction strategies when recruiting. The strategies normally used include relying on the opinions of the people they trust or people they see as powerful in the sector as a way of reducing their own risk. In this regard, they prefer to work with those screen writers they know personally or professionally instead of trusting in people totally unknown to them. Information collected from the players in the industry reveals that it is dominated by white middle-class men who prefer to work with people they perceive to be of their network and class. Wreyford acquires this information from her interviewees and the documents she reviewed and arrives at her conclusions.
Gaps and Limitations
No research project is immune to gaps and limitations. The first of the limitations is that the researcher only studied the UK film industry. There are film industries all over the globe and what happens in the UK along might not be the true representation of what happens every other place around the globe. Other players in other industries would have different opinions as to what brings out the inequality. Seeking views in other film industries would have made the findings of the research more diverse and representative.
The researched based most of her arguments on what she was told by the interviewees. In a way, most of the information represented here is from the perception of the interviewees. There is a possibility that they could have argued out of emotions rather than facts. Even though Wreyford has tried to use some l...