The 2020 award season kicked off Sunday with the 77th annual Golden Globes Awards show. Glitz, glamor, and gold were everywhere as Hollywood's best show up for a chance to win one of the TV and film industries' coveted prizes. Award shows like these have been in the spotlight in recent history for the lack of representation of women-led media. This year's show proved that we are nowhere near the end, or even the middle, of the fight for equality - We are still at the beginning.
On January 1, 2018, two years ago, the Time's Up organization was founded in an effort to bring to light the lack of fair and equal treatment of women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ communities in Hollywood. The organization was created in part by members of the Me Too movement, a group focused on bringing to light the rampant sexual harassment and violence in the movie and television industry. How is it that between Time's Up and #MeToo being a central topic in media news during award season, there is still a severe lack of women nominations at award shows?
See the full list of winners and nominees.When looking over the list of nominees and award winners, you will notice a disturbing lack of female directors. In fact, outside of any categories for actresses, only one woman won an award that could have gone to a creator of any gender: Best Original Score – Motion Picture, which was won by Hildur Guðnadóttir for the movie Joker.
A cynic might look at these facts and think, "if women made better stuff, they'd win more awards," and I can see how you might think that, but you'd be wrong. The issue here is not the quality of content, it is the representation. There is still a shockingly low number of women directors. According to womenandhollywood.com, women directors made up only 12% of 2019's top 100 grossing movies, a significant increase from 2018's 4% of top-grossing, women-led movies. While movements like Time's Up and #MeToo face a lot of criticism, their impact has driven more representation in Hollywood.
Three major movies came out in the past year, helmed by female directors, which received praise from critics: Little Women (Greta Gerwig), Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria) and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Marielle Heller). Each of these films were nominated for Golden Globes yet NONE of them won a single award.
During the 2020 Golden Globes, Michelle Williams used her acceptance speech as a platform to support women again, just two years after calling out the disparity between her $800 pay for 10 days of reshoots for the movie All the Money In the World, which co-stars Mark Wahlberg would be paid $1.5 million.
Williams' acceptance speech for Best Actress in a Supporting Role - TV Series (Fosse/Verdon) was an echoing plea for women everywhere to take the fight to the next level. Williams begged women to not just fight for representation in the media, but to fight for representation in the country. "So women, 18 to 118," Michelle Williams said, "when it is time to vote, please do so in your own self-interest. It's what men have been doing for years, which is why the world looks so much like them but don't forget that we are the largest voting body in this country. Let's make it look more like us."
I support Michelle Williams' statement and encourage all of us to do our part to make 2020 the year where women finally have an equal share in all things.
