“PAT, BECOME A blonde. It’ll help get you a job in front of the cameras.”
So said Raysa Bonow, a sturdily built woman with red hair pulled back into a tight bun—not exactly a fashion ideal herself—but I knew enough to listen to her, the executive producer at WBZ-TV in Boston. If I wanted to be hired for an on-air position, I needed to do something about my hair. It seemed to come up in every conversation with a television executive.
I had joined the station as an associate producer of a weekly show about local politics, not the job of my dreams, but at least a step inside the door of a television station—and in this case, the most popular station in Boston.
As it turned out, being a woman or a minority was an asset when it came to getting hired to work in television in the late sixties and early seventies. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), established in the wake of the civil-rights and women’s movements, required companies to document nondiscriminatory hiring practices. These were not quotas, exactly, but the impact of the FCC on one side, requiring regular review and renewals of broadcast licenses, and the EEOC as a new monitor of hiring practices, led to new opportunities for women and minorities in television and radio—opportunities that might not have come so quickly without these incentives and accountability.
WBZ actually had two women on the air, one anchoring a noon news program and one hosting a morning talk show. And of course, Raysa Bonow was the Mother Superior to us all. A veteran of consciousness-raising groups, in 1970, Raysa had helped launch For Women Today (later redubbed The Sonya Hamlin Show). Forget advice on getting out tough stains or landing that man, Raysa and the show’s host, Sonya Hamlin, made sure the show tackled balancing career and motherhood, fighting for equal pay, a week-long exploration on gay and straight sexuality, and even a live self-examination to alert women to the dangers of breast cancer. It’s almost impossible to convey how revolutionary this was in the early 1970s.
RAYSA QUICKLY BECAME a mentor, one who knew how to get what she wanted from the men with decision-making power. I took her advice, streaked my hair blonde, and sure enough, a few months later, was asked to audition for a job as theatre and movie critic on the 11 p.m. news and got it. I knew a little bit about theatre, given my earlier focus in college, but not a clue about how to review film. But I was now a blonde and had the ability to talk live on television without nerves—an ability I attribute to keeping eighteen-year-olds interested in eighteenth-century poetry. Of course, I continued my producing position, too. After all, the news director explained, I was lucky to have both jobs, and I didn’t disagree, even though I was paid for only one.
My day started early with meetings for the weekly show, essentially producing minidocumentaries on political campaigns and candidates. I’d finish those assignments, rush home for a quick dinner with Mark, change my clothes, and zip off to opening night at the theatre or a film premiere, after which I’d taxi back to the station (I didn’t own a car for the first two years) to write up a review with seconds to spare before I slid into place next to the big, handsome, popular anchorman Tom Ellis, who always welcomed me on the set with a wink and boomed in his Texas drawl, “Well, here’s Pat back from another glamorous opening.”
Not exactly glamorous, but it didn’t take me long to realize that my ninety-second critiques were sometimes deciding the fate of theatre productions trying out in Boston before heading to Broadway or determining whether movies would deliver the much needed opening-weekend box-office punch. The power of the medium would dawn slowly and dramatically over my first year of mistakes, mishaps, and misgivings.
Within the first month on the 11 p.m. news, I was called in to a meeting with the news director.
“You’re using too many big words, Pat,” he told me. “You have to learn to write in simple sentences—and sound less Southern. Also, wear brighter colors and lower necklines, so you look like you just came from the theatre.” He looked pointedly at my outfit. “And for god’s sake, ditch the ugly scarves.”
Raysa worked on my vocabulary so I’d sound less professorial and tried to smooth my Southern accent by having me repeat over and over Yiddish words that began with s-c-h—schlep, schlemiel. Unfortunately, she didn’t instruct me about what those words meant. One night I was reviewing the latest Woody Allen film: “Woody Allen plays his usual schmuck,” I told our viewers, and right away, the switchboard lit up with outraged Jewish viewers who knew exactly what schmuck meant.
“You just called Woody Allen a penis!’” one viewer thundered over the phone. I apologized on the news the next night, and after consultations with leaders from the Jewish community, I agreed to get instruction from a local rabbi who became another mentor of sorts. He gave me an impressive, acceptable Yiddish vocabulary that has served me well from time to time, and with his support, I got past my first televised blooper. Imagine the longer-term damage of this cultural appropriation and misuse of Yiddish on television in the Twitter/meme world!
That wouldn’t be my last misstep. No one could have prepared me for the fame that comes with being on television. Boston was as passionate and as personal about their television reporters and news anchors as they were about their hockey and basketball players. I could feel eyes on me when I ate at restaurants; sometimes my name filtered into the gossip pages, with speculation about whom I might be dating.
No doubt about it… I was experiencing a meteoric rise. Within two years, I was reporting, anchoring an afternoon news program, and reviewing film and theatre on the 11 p.m. news—but I was still being paid as if I were the political producer for one weekly show.
Raysa prepped me for asking the boss for a raise.
“Ask to double your salary,” she insisted, “because you are more than doubling the work you were hired to do.”
That seemed pretty gutsy to me. Sure, this man had hired me to do both roles—but not before telling me that, at age twenty-nine, I was too old for television. And being a single mother was strike two. Still, I was feeling confident about my popularity and value to the station. So the next day I walked into his office, my spine straight.
“I’m doing more than twice as much as you hired me to do. I love it, I don’t want to give it up, but I’m working from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. I feel like it’s time to talk about what I’m worth to the station.”
Deadly silence. Then, the man who had hired me in spite of his misgivings about my age and motherhood, who had advocated for me when new opportunities arose, walked over and sat in the chair beside me, frowned reflectively, and said, “You know, I was walking through the grocery store last week and noticed that hamburger is now $1.39 a pound. Just a couple weeks ago, it was $1.98. The value of that hamburger meat varies a lot. Talent in television is like hamburger meat. You never know when people are going to lose their appetite for hamburgers and look for something new.”
Everything I’d prepared flew out of my head in an instant. Why were we talking about hamburger meat? I envisioned myself inside that Styrofoam plastic-wrapped package with the sell-by date and price stamped on it.
“Many young women”—emphasis on the young—“would kill to have any of your jobs,” he said, standing up to indicate the meeting was over.
But he had one final item on his agenda.
“How about dinner between the early and late news?” he asked. “I’m free tonight and maybe we can discuss the raise a bit more over a glass of wine?”
Sadly, I wasn’t surprised by the overture. Nearly every interview during my months of unemployment in New York had ended with similar invitations. In those days, we seldom, if ever, shared our fears or our truths, and in our silence, out of fear of reprisal or loss of job or promotion, we were complicit in the abuse of power that was widespread—then and now.
I knew what was at risk in declining the invitation to dinner, and I wasn’t wrong. After all, I was now working without a contract, and the prior discussions about getting my own talk show stopped cold. I worried that the slightest misstep, the smallest error, would seal my sell-by date. And of course, I didn’t say a word about the negotiation that became an inappropriate invitation, nor did I tell anyone about the remarks about my breasts or legs or probing questions about my personal life or the “breast touches” when mics were adjusted. I’d bet the raise I didn’t get that the other women at the station were getting the same sexual innuendoes and personal invitations and intimidating power plays.
Imagine how many future #MeToo stories we might have prevented had we shared our experiences and taken collective actions to expose the abusers. Silence and fear kept us in self-protective silos. Today, as more and more women have gone public and some high-profile perpetrators have faced the consequences, we have an opportunity and a responsibility, in my opinion, to end our silences, to talk about what happened and continues to happen, and to work collectively to end the power dynamic that was used then and now to dominate, diminish, and create environments where women were and are unsafe and exploited.
In those earlier, silent times, I dropped my push for a raise and continued to do four jobs and get paid for two—a familiar story for women in nearly every sector of business, even today. While I believe that being the one who volunteers to step up for a new responsibility is important, there’s a line between being eager and being exploited, and it wasn’t always clear then, but I’m clear about it now. Wanting to advance, being eager to learn, and proving that we could handle the responsibilities was part of being among the first in any profession. And while it’s still true that there is an expectation that we have to continue to work twice as hard for half the money, it’s critical to support all efforts for equal pay for equal work so that can become a reality for all women.
Reality shifted for me when the competing station offered me a job. “Have your agent call me,” was the message that changed the personal power dynamic in my life.
I didn’t have an agent, so I decided to call the only agent I knew personally—Bob Woolf, a prominent sports agent whom I had met through mutual friends and who had kindly hosted me at Bruins and Celtics games. Even though he only represented athletes at this time (later, he would represent Larry King and a lot of other big names in television), he agreed to take me on. Without even talking to me about salary and going on the scale of sports salaries he had negotiated for his star players, he asked for three times what I was making. The general manager at the competing ABC station agreed without much discussion, and Bob Woolf then took that offer back to my boss, who matched the salary on the spot, with no mention of the price of hamburger meat that week.
I learned from that first real negotiation that it was better for me to have someone else make the salary ask for me. Like others, particularly in my generation, I was less likely to put as high a value on my work as others did, and having agents negotiate salaries over the years was a better option for me. But when I did have to negotiate for myself, I became much braver about asking for fair value.
Later in my career as an executive, I observed that men, in general, ask for more money than women applying for the same positions, and that men definitely ask for raises more often.
I believe this lag in our personal-value proposition has a lot to do with the imposter syndrome—the internal doubt about our own success or accomplishments that makes us wary of asking for more, sure that we’re not as good as others believe we are. And the reluctance to push for a promotion or a raise is also the hangover of exhausting, energy-sapping turf battles that make us, as women, reluctant to make waves or to support each other, having been assured that the spaces for women are more limited and our sell-by dates can be moved forward if we appear too ambitious or aggressive. And of course, many of us still wage the secret battle internally to navigate the sexual power plays that often occur during negotiations about our value.
For millions of our sisters working in jobs that don’t begin to pay what their labor is worth, working twice as hard for half the pay or less, there are other barriers to fair and equal earnings. They don’t enjoy the freedoms or opportunities to negotiate for raises or to stand up to the power plays or sexual threats that also threaten necessary livelihoods. We have a responsibility to speak up for them. To raise our voices, to use our collective power and experience in negotiating to obtain better guarantees and protections for all working women.
In my working life, I’ve been fortunate (or shortsighted, according to my accountant) to sometimes put other considerations ahead of money—doing what I love, learning something new, having new adventures, and creating something of value. As a result, I don’t have a huge retirement fund or even the luxury to cease work for pay altogether, but in my new “less to prove or lose” place in life’s journey, I’m making work choices the same way I’m making life choices: based more on time spent than money made. And I discovered, late in my working life, that knowing my worth and asking for it didn’t narrow the options; it increased them. Believing that was a big step that felt risky for a long time, but it’s a risk I wish I had taken earlier on my journey to becoming more valued in the marketplace, and importantly, on my journey to believing in my own value.
“DO NOT VOLUNTEER to cover women’s stories of any kind. And for goodness’ sake, don’t call yourself a feminist!”
That was the advice from everyone at WBZ, but it was the seventies and the women’s movement was front and center. It was a time when the problems with no names got names and coalitions were forming across sectors of work and life, and I wanted to play a part. As a news reporter, I couldn’t become the story by joining the marches, but I wanted to make the story better known and understood. My female colleagues and I wanted to get more stories about women on the air, and in 1974, the women of WBZ achieved something that the New York Times called “history making for women.”
Yes, We Can was the bold name we gave to our idea of a marathon day of programming for women, produced and directed and hosted by women. Raysa headed up the production team, which by now included a woman or two behind the cameras and on the technical crews and more in front of the cameras too. WBZ’s male management turned over the station and twenty-four hours of valuable broadcast time to a bold and audacious idea that we could get an audience for a full day and night of programming focused on women’s issues and that women and men would show up in person at the venue for live panels, demonstrations, presentations, and a happening that we really didn’t even know how to describe.
I tried to describe it to Gloria Steinem, whom I invited to cohost the event. I’d met her at one of the early women’s movement marches in New York through her friend and my colleague at LOOK, Pat Carbine. Gloria agreed to come but was skeptical that such an event would really have any impact. She did offer to invite other activists and friends, and I promised that we would make this a meaningful step forward for women—at least in Boston and, we believed, throughout television—if we were successful.
As the host of the black-tie gala that launched our twenty-four-hour television marathon, Yes, We Can, I looked out of sync in my sparkling pink pantsuit (that Raysa had insisted I wear) while introducing such feminist icons as Gloria, African American activist Florynce Kennedy, Betty Friedan, and other women leaders who were more appropriately attired for the seriousness of this groundbreaking event. We wanted to use television’s power, at least for twenty-four hours, for women—for our stories, our challenges, our accomplishments. Singer/songwriter Helen Reddy performed “I Am Woman,” which had become something of an anthem at that time, and as we all sang with her, “I am woman, hear me roar!” we felt the power of sisterhood that had brought us to that moment.
Of course, the women’s movement isn’t one voice, one song, or even one agenda, and there were differences of opinion about what it meant to be a feminist, even then (and of course, now). Reflecting on what happened the next day, we should have been more alert to the differences in opinion and the need to be more inclusive.
We had taken over the Hynes Auditorium in downtown Boston for a full day of workshops, panels, a job fair, and relevant information shared live on television on everything from women’s health to work-life balance to job training. More than 25,000 women (some reports said 75,000) showed up on what turned out to be the coldest day of the year, creating a traffic jam in downtown Boston and a crisis in the overcrowded on-site daycare we had announced we were generously providing.
Women ran everything: the cameras, the lighting, the sound, directing, producing. At one end on a large stage, we held interviews and conversations that were being broadcast live. Each of the on-air personalities took turns on stage, moderating the panels. I had the noon panel with the fabulous Flo Kennedy. Wearing her signature black cowboy hat and boots, Flo sat down next to me on the stage.
I was thrilled to be interviewing her; Flo had busted through so many barriers. She’d graduated from Columbia Law School in the early fifties and become an activist for feminist and civil-rights causes, eventually touring the country with Gloria Steinem. Now Flo gave me a skeptical if not downright disapproving look, running her eyes over yet another girly pink pantsuit (at least it wasn’t the sparkling one) and my perfectly coiffed hair, and said, “Honey, am I supposed to look at you or the cameras during this interview?”
I knew she was making a point that had nothing to do with camera angles, but she quickly laughed that huge, cackling laugh of hers, slapped my upper leg, and said, “It’s okay, honey. I can see beyond your color.” Flo would use her quick wit and humor to defuse many tense situations during those days of marches and protests, and on this day of groundbreaking television, too.
Our interview was just starting when a loud commotion in the auditorium clearly signaled a problem. Looking past the stage lights, I saw a large crowd moving quickly toward the stage, carrying huge white signs reading “Liberation, Not Tokenism” and “Abortion on Demand.” As they moved closer, I could read four-letter words on some of the other signs and hear curses being shouted. A similar torrent of four-letter words was streaming in my ear through the communications device connecting me to the control room at the station. Pandemonium broke out in the auditorium as nonprotesters and protesters shouted at each other, and there was a panic back at the station, since all of this was being broadcast live!
“Go to commercial!” I kept shouting over my headset, which gave me time to assess the situation. The biggest group of marchers, dressed in jeans and combat boots, were protesting the lack of lesbians on the program and the fact that gay rights weren’t being represented anywhere in the materials being distributed. They were right, of course. We had made a significant blunder and were as guilty of not being inclusive as we were accusing television, in general, of being.
Now we had a big challenge. How to keep this day for which we’d worked so hard from falling apart? We knew that the optics, as they’d come to be known, would be the women protesters shouting four-letter words at other women; women against women.
We agreed that the protesters should be heard and Sonya Hamlin, my experienced WBZ colleague, Flo, and I made another seat on the panel for one of the parade leaders, who also gave my pink suit a once-over, rolling her eyes as she sat down next to me. I took on the challenge to try to keep one group of unhappy women, regrettably excluded and rightfully upset about it, from dominating the rest of the day and distracting everyone from the positive interchanges we were witnessing all over the room. Flo was masterful in negotiating past the anger to a place where the panel ended with hugs and high fives.
When the event was behind us, over late-night drinks and laughter, we organizers talked over the stories we were sure we’d see in the press the next day. Would it be all the job opportunities? The health-care options? The interviews with feminism’s leading lights? Instead, sure enough, the protesters grabbed the headlines, and the photograph of me in my pink suit facing off with the parade leaders was front-page in some places.
Yes, We Can proved that a group of women could put together a full day and evening of informative, relevant programming and that women would show up and tune in. But it had also reinforced the disempowering narrative that women don’t agree among themselves about important issues and that we don’t support each other’s efforts. It’s certainly true that women as a global community are not monolithic in values, opinions, or shared goals and aspirations. But I believed, even then in 1974, that we have more in common than the political, religious, and cultural differences that sometimes divide us, and tapping into that resource—the power of collective action—sustains my commitment to optimize every opportunity to tell a different story about women and what we want, need, and can give to each other.
REGRETTABLY, THE STORY of our differences continues to push through the most positive stories of the accomplishments of collective actions toward common goals over the years since Yes, We Can. The response to the call for women to march in 2017, following the election of Donald Trump, created a collective action that moved millions of women all over the world into the streets in unified protest.
The convergence delivered a powerful message. But after time, as too often happens, discord arose among some of the organizers, and differences of opinion divided communities. Leading up to the Women’s March in 2019, stories in the press focused on the disunity, but still women showed up all over the world to march again, together. Women intent upon change are not always of one mind on any single issue, and while I admit to feeling deep sadness when the differences distract us—and the media—from the purpose of the work or action, I prefer to focus on what is accomplished, and above all, to stay connected even when our ties are tested.
According to sociologist Jo Reger, who studies social movements, “sometimes the ways we begin to change these things is when we begin to talk about them, and to examine the world around us to see: What have I been allowing? What have I not noticed? What have I been accepting? What has my privilege blinded me to? And how can I begin to address it?”
I emerged from the Yes, We Can experience committed to asking those questions about how we, privileged women inside media, were going to use media’s power to bridge differences and convene difficult conversations.
“HOUSEWIVES AREN’T INTERESTED in hearing other women’s stories or learning about issues or watching other women on television,” was the response I got from the head of programming when I proposed a new daily talk show that would continue in the spirit of Yes, We Can, an effort he had dismissed already as proof of the theory that women won’t show up for each other.
“Women love their daytime dramas,” he continued, pointing out that the so-called popular soap operas, like Guiding Light and General Hospital, “are giving women what they want.” Yes, that was the prevailing theory of programming in the seventies, but as I tried to point out to the closed-minded male executive, women watching television in the daytime had few if any viewing options. I went on to suggest that this was a narrow and possibly outdated view of the women in the audience and why not try an optional format—one that offered women content with more relevance to their lives?
I also pointed out to the skeptical executive that I had tested high on the audience likability scores—yes, there were and are such measurements of television personalities—so if I hosted such a show, I could possibly bring in more women viewers. I wasn’t asking for more money, after all, just more television time and an opportunity to devote more of it to substantive programming for women.
After a few more meetings, I got permission to pull together a team and launch Woman 74—an hour live every day featuring interviews and conversations with women about women. With a small but evolving sisterhood at the station, we moved into new, and as it turned out, risky territory.
On a show about aging, a well-known pediatrician and family therapist named Dr. Eleanor Hamilton was asked about the biggest challenge for older women and calmly replied, “They think they can’t fuck after sixty.” Pandemonium broke out in the studio with the director shouting, “Go to commercial!” We did, but it was too late. The four-letter word, forbidden in the tightly regulated and pre-cable world of the seventies, had gone out to the large regional New England audience. The phones started ringing as Dr. Hamilton, wearing her signature wire-rimmed specs and looking like the grandmother she was, wondered, Why the fuss?
The FCC and FBI arrived to investigate and explained that we had violated an interstate-commerce law that regulated the transport of content, including language. The station was fined and the show was put on a hiatus for a few weeks. Because of this incident and others, stations and networks instituted a seven-second delay on all live broadcasts—time enough for a television director to delete a word or a comment before it was transmitted.
We also took on the issue of abortion, knowing that this subject always means controversy, given the great divide of opinions. I had decided to interview Dr. Kenneth Edelin, a doctor who had performed a late-term legal abortion, as well as the woman who elected to have the abortion. The state of Massachusetts had brought manslaughter charges against Dr. Edelin, ultimately convicting him even though he’d performed the procedure shortly after Roe v. Wade legalized it. The fact that Dr. Edelin was black and the jury was all white certainly made race a factor in the trial and debate that followed. The conviction was eventually overturned on appeal, but the program created more trouble than even we anticipated.
The next morning, protesters surrounded WBZ, calling for the show to be canceled. Negotiations with them didn’t go well. The station offered them time on the show, but unlike the lesbian leaders who rightfully protested their omission from programming at Yes, We Can, this group wasn’t convinced to trade television time for appeasement. So WBZ suspended live broadcasts for another few weeks, and I got a lot of press, some praising my courage, others condemning the use of public airwaves for advocating my clearly liberal and feminist point of view.
Both opinions had validity, but so did the newsworthiness of the subject and the importance of an open conversation about what was at stake, not just in the case of one doctor who told the New York Times in 1975, “Nobody likes to do abortions, but the least we can do is make it safe and humane,” but what’s at stake again right now. More than forty years later, in the United States, we are witnessing state legislators, governors, and Congress pass laws and enact policies that are diminishing (many with the goal of ultimately eliminating) a woman’s right to choose when or if to have children and what is the best health outcome for herself and her family.
Reproductive justice and a woman’s right to control her own body are still a battleground, one that feels far too familiar to those of us who came of reproductive age when there was no legal access to a safe and humane abortion in cases of unwanted pregnancies, incest, rape, or threats to a mother’s health. The generations since Roe v. Wade who also have access to many forms of safe contraception have perhaps taken the freedom to control what happens to their bodies for granted. I hope they won’t be silent about the real consequences of losing reproductive rights because it feels like we are closer to that reality than I could have imagined we would ever be again.
MY REALITY AT this time in my life, approaching thirty, was a far cry from the fears I had felt in coping with an unplanned pregnancy, getting through an early divorce without support from friends or family, and putting together a life as a single mother. I had landed in a career that satisfied my drive to learn—nothing better for an innately curious person than journalism, which presents each new assignment as a learning opportunity. I was making more money than I ever imagined and doing work that I felt was important. I was discovering a natural inclination to lead and a love of working with women.
I was proving more fearless than I would ever have predicted in taking on challenges and controversy in my work, but still not fearless enough to expose the unwanted sexual advances that continued for me and most assuredly for others. I regret that I didn’t use my personal power resulting from my position and popularity to speak out, to go public and name names, to take the risk of not being believed, and to losing hard-fought gains with a distracting controversy and confrontation. Today, witnessing the brave women who come forward, risking so much—and still not always being believed (and often losing more than their perpetrators)—I feel shame for my silence then and anger that this dangerous power dynamic still exists.
Looking back, I had enough personal power to take that chance. I had made myself almost indispensable with my highly visible positions on early-morning drive-time radio, on a daily talk show, as an anchor of a daily news program, and as the high-profile entertainment reporter on the 11 p.m. news. Little wonder I tested high on audience surveys. I was on television a lot.
And I was not home enough. I remember sitting in 6 p.m. staff meetings, feeling guilty that I was missing early dinner with Mark—again—and at the same time, feeling guilty that I wasn’t giving the meeting my full attention either. This was a dilemma that I didn’t dare discuss then with my male colleagues or with most of the women I knew who were either single or without children. I didn’t know anyone who had a nanny either, but I had hired a graduate student to live with us and be with Mark when I wasn’t—which was too much of the time. She was a kind and loving companion for many years, but she wasn’t his mother.
He needed more from me, and I needed more help balancing the opportunities at work and my responsibilities as a parent—a balance that is still, for so many working parents, a question with no simple answer. It is the one question that I never feel I answer well when asked, as I often am, how I navigated my career while being a single parent. “Not well enough” is the most honest answer.
Like other women, I looked everywhere for role models on how to balance the work-life challenge better, so I was listening closely when Katherine “Kay” Fanning, the first woman to become editor of a national newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor, was asked whether women could have it all—a successful career and a satisfying personal life. She replied, “Yes, we can have it all—just not all at one time.”
An important insight, but I didn’t stop trying to have it all and at once, at least not during this time of professional and personal growth, challenges, and opportunities. I embraced each one and became more and more committed to the idea that I could make a difference through media’s power—and this became the touchstone for all my subsequent choices as a journalist, independent producer, talk-show host, and ultimately, as a media executive.
SOME THIRTY YEARS after Yes, We Can, I was invited to a meeting one rainy Sunday afternoon in Gloria Steinem’s apartment with several other veterans of media and various social-justice movements. The subject was media and what we could do about the consolidation of its power among fewer and fewer owners as well as the lack of regulation in a game-changing technological revolution that was transforming the media landscape and all our lives, even then, in 2005, with consequences that we couldn’t anticipate. As the CEO of PBS at the time, I was experiencing these challenges up close and was ready to support any efforts to address the negative impact of media’s underrepresentation and misrepresentation of women.
We agreed that it was time to do something; after all, women were the most important consumers of all media, including the new technologies, and were, in fact, shaping the power of social media as its earliest adopters. Our attributes as communicators and storytellers aligned well with the social-media tools. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn kept us connected with family, friends, and colleagues, and women became, quickly, the most highly valued consumers of the new digital-media platforms. But women weren’t leading or owning any of the new media companies, and the number of women in clout positions—those with decision-making power—in any media or technology company was still appallingly low.
After an afternoon of complaining and pointing out the problems, an action plan was presented by three women who already had lifetimes of frontline leadership in movements for change: Robin Morgan, Gloria Steinem, and Jane Fonda. They proposed a new advocacy organization to act as a monitor of the media, documenting the need for changes, and to be an advocate for increasing the numbers of women on-screen and behind the scenes. The group, which included committed feminists with media experience and resources to support a new nonprofit—Loreen Arbus, Carol Jenkins, Helen Zia, Regina Scully, and others—stepped up and with Robin, Gloria, and Jane as founders, launched the Women’s Media Center (WMC).
I signed on for the board, too. I then became chair, and now I’m cochair with Maya Harris. Since 2005, WMC has effectively used interconnected strategies of research: issuing comprehensive annual reports on the status of women in all media and technology as well as evidence of the need for greater diversity and higher numbers; promoting more women’s voices and opinions through the SheSource database; training progressive women to be media ready; and recognizing and celebrating the women in media who are leading change and having positive impact.
Every year, at the WMC awards, I get to present the Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award to a woman whose media work reflects a commitment to improving the status of women in media. It’s deeply meaningful to me to publicly recognize and honor another woman and her work, and so far the award has been given to Christiane Amanpour, Katie Couric, Judy Woodruff, the late Gwen Ifill, Regina Scully, and Abigail Disney—women using media’s power to further empower other women—a commitment shared and strengthened by this acknowledgment. What a privilege for me!
As chair of the board of the Sundance Institute, I have witnessed the progress in bringing more women storytellers into our lab programs and exhibiting their work at the Sundance Film Festival. What began over a breakfast and conversation hosted by Sundance board member Jacki Zehner is now a fully deployed strategy, shaped and led by the exceptionally effective CEO of the Sundance Institute, Keri Putnam. This strategy has helped to open up opportunities for women writers, directors, and producers, and to advance greater access to financial resources and distribution options. This has had an impact not only on Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival in terms of representation in all our programs, but also on the media landscape at large.
The numbers of women-led projects and films directed by people of color selected for the Sundance Institute labs as well as the Sundance Film Festival over the several years of this initiative are proof that a strategy with accountable outcomes, powered by a team committed to be more inclusive, works. At the 2019 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, the numbers of women directors and producers almost reached parity—a new and important benchmark in progress toward equalizing opportunities for women in front of and behind the cameras—and the numbers of films directed by people of color also increased significantly. The more inclusive lineup led to some of the most positive reviews for the films and the festival experience.
When my twenty-one-year-old granddaughter, Laura Elizabeth, a film student at UCLA, arrived for the final weekend at the 2019 festival, she asked about the positive comments she was hearing about this year’s lineup of films. I pointed to the increase in women and people of color who were storytellers, noting that different storytellers tell different kinds of stories. The value of diversity in this case was further supported by the fact that some of the women-led projects broke records for distribution deals.
The numbers overall, however, documented in research conducted by Sundance and USC’s Dr. Stacey Smith of Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, indicate we still have a long way to go to level the playing field, especially at the intersections of money and market. We have definitely made progress, but the numbers fall off dramatically when it comes to the measurement of who gets financing to make their films and which films reach the largest audiences and bring in the biggest box-office revenues.
In 2017, director Patty Jenkins broke through one significant barrier to women’s progress in movies: Wonder Woman surpassed $800 million at the box office, proving that a woman can direct a blockbuster. In 2018, Ava DuVernay became the first woman of color to direct a $100 million movie, A Wrinkle in Time, for Disney, and later that same year, she signed a multimillion-dollar production deal with Warner Bros.
These two success stories won’t lower all the barriers or end all the stereotypes that continue to block women as directors or as engineers or as CEOs. As media makers and as media consumers, we all have a role to play in changing this picture, in creating new narratives and stories, in advocating for more women’s voices, ideas, opinions, stories, and importantly, women’s leadership where decisions are made. The power of media is in our hands, now more than ever, and women, as one of the most influential users of social media, can use it to support women’s stories, women-led projects and initiatives, and each other. As one of the most important media-consumer groups, we can make sure our decisions about what we watch, listen to, tweet, Instagram, blog, connect, celebrate, or condemn in media reflects our values, individually and as a global community. Media matters and Yes, We Can make it better.
DANGEROUS TIMES CALL FOR DANGEROUS WOMEN
In Conversation with Ava DuVernay
Ava DuVernay, as a director, producer, screenwriter, and leader, has been making the media landscape better for women her entire career, which is on a fast track to unprecedented success. From promoting and celebrating women’s stories, especially women of color, to the creative choices she makes as a director and producer, to the leadership she puts into action through her nonprofit, ARRAY, Ava is one of the most courageous and committed women I have the privilege to know and celebrate.
Her accomplishments are many; most notably, in 2012, she became the first black woman to win the Sundance Film Festival prize for directing Middle of Nowhere. She’s also the first black woman director to have a film nominated for best picture—Selma, which chronicles how the 1965 marches in Alabama led by Martin Luther King Jr. catalyzed the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Ava received another Academy Award nomination for best documentary for 13th, a devastating film that painstakingly exposes how our prison system disproportionately targets and punishes African Americans. Ava returned to the subject of injustices in the legal system with the recent Netflix documentary series When They See Us.
Through ARRAY, her distribution collective dedicated to films by people of color and women, she is committed to centering independent voices from the margins of the mainstream. I was eager to hear what she would say about the notion that danger is necessary for progress.
Do you agree with the statement that dangerous times call for dangerous women?
Ava: For women, the times are always dangerous. Always have been. Cultural, sexual, social, emotional, historical, political, and physical violence has permeated the lives of women for as long as the history books can chronicle the state of our world. Few countries or cultures or communities have been immune. The situations have been even more threatening to women of color, divorced from proximity to patriarchy and power. And so dangerous times have necessitated the innovation, ingenuity, inspiration, and imagination of women at all turns. To defend ourselves. To protect ourselves. To help ourselves. To heal ourselves—and each other.
How does being a dangerous woman play out in your work and life?
Ava: I consider myself a dangerous woman. If you are working outside of the dominant culture, there is no easy place for you. There is no safe space for you. Your voice and vision and presence are always at risk. So just the literal act of asserting your voice and vision and presence is dangerous. And brave. And necessary if you can muster it. I don’t think the bravery that we are speaking of is related to age. It’s all an evolution. And everyone is different.
Who were your dangerous role models or inspirations?
Ava: My mother and grandmother and Aunt Denise are my role models of defying expectations and living dangerously and as truthfully as they could. I’m lucky to have been raised in a family dominated by women. Women who stood up for themselves and loved and helped each other and taught me and my sisters to do the same.
From your perspective, where are the danger zones for women now?
Ava: Sadly, the range of remaining danger zones for women is wide and deep. From domestic and sexual violence to unjust laws and policing, from harmful workplaces to environmental injustice in our communities that affects families and well-being. The rate of death of black mothers in childbirth being more than double that of our white counterparts… in the United States… in 2019! Like I said, the range is wide and deep. And so the solutions and resistance must be the same.