Guest Post by Kylee Peña

In the entertainment industry, there are a lot of diversity programs. Initiatives serving diverse writers, diverse directors, diverse engineers, and diverse executives — if you’re in the business, you can probably name at least a few. The more research that emerges about the lack of female representation in film and television post-production, the more diversity programs get created.

And yet after more than a decade of collecting data on representation above and below the line, nothing has changed. Women remain underrepresented, leaving the industry by mid-career — if they’re able to make it that far at all. Diversity programs are failing them. That’s why two of my BFFs — Katie Hinsen, head of operations at New Zealand company Department of Post, and Meaghan Wilbur, an Emmy-nominated editor — and I are seeking to fix them, for ourselves and for our sisters. Much of our work is through the Blue Collar Post Collective, a non-profit that supports emerging talent in post-production roles.

This fall we presented an academic paper we authored for the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) at their annual technical conference in Hollywood. The manuscript, which is available temporarily for download and permanently on SMPTE’s Digital Library, is like a bazillion more words than a blog post should contain.

The report explores aspects of privilege, intersectionality, and bias from an often ignored below-the-line (technician, engineer, editor) perspective for women in Hollywood, and makes recommendations for fixing diversity programs. We make a case for how and why the gender gap exists with a large number of citations, making the manuscript a great resource for anyone in our industry. It’s especially useful for anyone who needs to build an argument for diversity in tandem with fixing diversity.

Our main thesis: diversity programs at the intersection of entertainment and STEM are failing women because they’re centered around the wrong things: they’re taking a top-down approach and focusing exclusively on people already established in careers — like directors. They’re too narrow to be useful, and they aren’t accessible to people who are trying to build a career foundation. Instead of “diversity programs,” the industry needs to rethink its organizations and concentrate on supporting these underrepresented people in the first five years of their careers — before they get discouraged and leave.

Our five recommendations for fixing diversity programs:

1. Stop Pushing Diversity Programs

They aren’t working, so scrap them and focus on making your organization a place where everyone can succeed. Sure, there have been occasional successes — but the data from the last two decades doesn’t lie.

When diversity programs are created, they effectively isolate underrepresented groups from networks of influence, creating an echo chamber that’s easily ignored by the majority of white men in power. Companies are already beginning to embrace this, dissolving affinity groups in favor of training that includes everyone.

2. Make an Effort to Focus from the Bottom Up

Feminism doesn’t trickle down, and when one woman arrives in a place of power in a hostile work environment, she is being set up to fail. Instead of focusing on a few potential successes at the top, organizations should support all women at the start of their careers, when they’re still assistant editors and camera assistants.

In the tech world, the workplace was designed by and for white men who instilled their own values and needs into the environment. Changing things from the bottom up is the only way to make cultural change stick.

3. Put a Stop to Unpaid Internships

Only people with certain privileges are able to work for free, so organizations must level the playing field for many types of people and offer entry-level jobs instead. The Blue Collar Post Collective conducted a survey which included U.S.-based post-production professionals who studied an industry-based program at college. The survey showed that a majority took on three unpaid internships before they found a job.

On average, women are paid less than men within the same industry while also taking on more household work, regardless of their breadwinner status. Because of their economic and societal disadvantages combined with the gender-related expectations thrust upon them, it becomes infinitely more difficult for a woman to take an unpaid opportunity, which makes it harder for her to establish a foundation of work.

4. Empower Hiring Managers with the Tools and Insight They Need to Make a Difference

A common solution for diverse hiring is to find a diverse hiring manager. However, women are often punished for tokenism when they hire other women. In a recent study by the Harvard Business Review, women and non-white executives who participated frequently in “diversity-valuing behaviors” were rated lower in competence and performance by their bosses. These same bosses neither punished nor rewarded white male executives for participating in this behavior.

Hiring managers must be able to find who is missing in the organization and be empowered to evaluate candidates holistically, without retribution. They must be able to approach interviews differently, evaluating how a person got to where they are today instead of a superficial list of accomplishments.

5. Ask, Listen, Offer Help, Ask for Feedback

One of the most overlooked parts of rethinking diversity: asking the underrepresented people for their insight. Since diversity programs and committees are run by or made up of people who have the privilege to participate in them, the lack of expanded insight can make these approaches too narrow to be useful or applicable. Organizations should find the people who are largely missing, ask them about their life, and understand that their experience doesn’t negate anyone else’s. They also can’t put the burden of diversity on the underrepresented people themselves.

There are so many reasons for diversity and inclusiveness to be a priority inside a company, demonstrated through better returns on investments and computer algorithms. But most of all, it’s the right thing to do. Instead of diversity programs that make for good press releases and are easily celebrated as successes, organizations must realize that the only way to make change is to buckle down and do the work, starting with supporting emerging below the line talent in the first five years of their careers.

Kylee Peña spent nearly a decade as a video editor before moving into post-production technology. There she applies her knowledge of a working editorial department to the technical and creative aspects of workflow design and management on shows such as “Jane the Virgin” (The CW) and “Scorpion” (CBS). Peña is also an Associate Editor for CreativeCOW.net, writing technical analyses and interviewing notable film personalities while also bringing light to important topics like gender equality and mental health. She is currently president of the Blue Collar Post Collective.