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Time's up a year later: Hollywood women test their clout

Time's Up a Year Later: Hollywood Women Test Their Clout
Time's Up a Year Later: Hollywood Women Test Their Clout

At the Golden Globes in 2018, Time’s Up, the Hollywood-led initiative to combat workplace sexual harassment, made a triumphant debut: Stars donned black in solidarity, and Oprah Winfrey delivered an impassioned call for support.

In the year since, the group has notched a string of successes, big and small. It has also faced two notable setbacks, including the sudden resignation of its chief executive this week, during its quest to overcome skepticism about its mission and momentum.

“How do you fix centuries of patriarchy in 12 months, right? That’s a big ask,” said Christy Haubegger, an agent and one of Time’s Up’s founders.

The organization’s crown jewel — a legal-defense fund for lower-wage workers — now has nearly $25 million in donations, up from $13 million when the group was formed. Of that, $6 million has gone toward 100 legal cases and investigations, with more than 800 lawyers signed on to assist, many working pro bono or at discounted rates. Two talent agencies that answered the Time’s Up challenge to reach gender parity in pay and leadership by 2020, ICM Partners and Creative Artists Agency, report that they are on track to make good on their pledge.

And at the urging of Time’s Up, CBS donated part of the severance money initially earmarked for its ousted chief executive, Les Moonves, to various advocacy organizations. Time’s Up had suggested $120 million; CBS went with $20 million, including $2 million for Time’s Up causes. (The CBS board has since denied Moonves any payment.)

The group nabbed more glowing headlines this year, artfully taking advantage of the awards season spotlight, its specialty. Onstage at the Golden Globes last month, actress Regina King pledged that women would make up 50 percent of her productions’ hires for the next two years. At Sundance, actress Tessa Thompson vowed to work with a female director on a feature film in the next 18 months, a promise echoed by dozens of actors and producers, including Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams, along with seven studios, among them Universal and Warner Bros.

“These are things that, two years ago, would’ve never come out of my mouth,” said Stacy Smith, executive director of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at University of Southern California and a Time’s Up member, of those recent accomplishments. “And here we are. It’s a new day.”

Still, the group, formed in response to accusations against producer Harvey Weinstein — he now faces sexual assault charges in Manhattan, which he has denied — has also experienced prominent disappointments. On Monday, its chief executive, Lisa Borders, resigned after less than four months on the job. The departure was amicable — in a statement she said a family matter left her no other option — and the hunt is on for a successor.

Producers Shonda Rhimes and Katie McGrath, core Time’s Up members, said in statement that the group’s mission to dismantle “a very damaged culture” was unchanged. “While we’re sorry to see Lisa go, Time’s Up is steadfast in creating a framework to combat that culture,” they said.

The group’s clout is also not yet clear. In January, Skydance Media hired as its animation chief, John Lasseter, who left his leadership posts at Pixar and Disney in 2018 after he was accused of unwanted touching. (He has apologized to anyone who felt his gestures “crossed the line.”)

Skydance had consulted with Time’s Up, but the group publicly slammed the hire; the organizations have differing accounts about whether Time’s Up made its objections clear in advance. (Lasseter’s hiring prompted Emma Thompson to exit a voice-over role in a forthcoming animated Skydance movie, a representative for the actress confirmed Wednesday.) Several of Time’s Up members said the episode was less about the limits of the group’s power than about inertia in the industry.

“I don’t think it shows Time’s Up doesn’t have teeth,” Tessa Thompson said. “I think it shows that what does have teeth is people make decisions based purely on the bottom line, and on business, and frankly that will continue to happen.”

Until Borders was hired in October, the group was run entirely by volunteer efforts. Their sprawling initiatives included a 26-member commission, headed by Anita Hill, who said the development of a system for reporting and responding to claims of harassment and bias was still underway.

Time’s Up is far from the first effort aimed at correcting power imbalances in Hollywood. Still, with members including Reese Witherspoon, Eva Longoria, Ava DuVernay and Rhimes, it is easily the most high-profile. There have been grumblings that the group is cliquey and disorganized, and that its members have used meetings to network. There have also been whispered concerns that it has overshadowed decades of work by others long devoted to advancing the gender equity cause.

Calls for studios to adopt more representative hiring on camera and behind the scenes date, at least, to the ’70s; organizations like the Representation Project, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, and Women in Film were all largely created to that end. Yet none matched the wattage of Time’s Up, whose reach extends beyond entertainment, with affiliate groups like Time’s Up Tech, Time’s Up Advertising and Time’s Up Healthcare formed or in the works.

“They are bold, and they are loud, and they have the ability to amplify their mission and message better than any other organization in the space,” said Amy Baer, president of Women in Film.

The group’s halo effect has reached beyond Hollywood. Tina Tchen, who spearheaded the creation of the legal defense fund, said that thousands of callers, hailing from 60 industries, have contacted the organization for guidance, and that two-thirds were lower income.

Katherine Wutchiett, a lawyer at Legal Aid at Work, which represents lower income workers in San Francisco, said five of her organization’s cases received money from the fund. That included that a lawsuit by Jennifer Atkinson, who left her job on a military base after being harassed for pumping breast milk. “It has allowed attorneys to have additional freedom in the types of cases that they take,” Wutchiett said.

The women of Time’s Up say this is precisely what they had set out to do: Use their resources and clout to help women lacking both. Hilary Rosen, a Time’s Up organizer and strategist with SKDKnickerbocker, a communications firm, said that, as opposed to the ’60s and ’70s, nowadays more women wield the power to lift other women up.

“Women are not outside banging on the doors,” she said. “Women inside the room, with power and money, are helping to make change for people who are still outside, who aren’t yet in the right rooms.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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