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Writers Guild of Canada releases new report on equity, diversity and inclusion in Canadian television

From a media release:

The Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) has released a new Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Report with 2022 data. The initiative is part of the WGC and its Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) Committee’s efforts to work towards addressing issues of historic underrepresentation in Canadian television. (Diversity groups are defined by the WGC as Indigenous, Black, LGBTQ2S, People of Colour, People with Disabilities.)

The new report provides membership data from 2017 to 2022 and includes contract data from 58 live-action and 29 animated series that started production in 2022.

For the first time, this report includes earnings data and also features interviews with members who have participated in training and networking opportunities for diverse writers.

The data shows some marked increases in 2022, including:

  • The percentage of Indigenous writers and writers with disabilities joining the Guild grew to 7% each, from 5% and 4% in 2021 respectively. The percentage of diverse members joining with intersectional identities has also grown from 12% in 2021 to 17% in 2022.
  • The percentage of WGC diverse writers who are working has increased steadily from 21% in 2018 to 38% in 2022. The increase is largely explained by a higher participation of writers of colour and Black writers.
  • Writing credits for People of Colour have increased consistently from 7% to 17% between 2018 and 2022. Similarly, the share of writing credits for Black writers increased from 3% to 9.4% during the same period. In the case of LGBTQ2S screenwriters, writing credits recovered from a steady decrease and now sit at 17%.

Other observations on the 2022 data include:

  • Across every diversity category, the share of writers earning more than $200,000 is well below the 7.9% of “white, cisgender, heterosexual and non-disabled” (non-diverse) writers in that category.
  • In animation, there is a significant gap between the compensation of non-diverse and diverse writers. While non-diverse animation writers represent 22.9% of working writers and account for 15.4% of total earnings, diverse animation writers represent 8.6% of working writers but only account for 2.2% of total earnings.
  • The share of Indigenous writers and writers with disabilities working on TV remains low when compared to population numbers. The percentage of Indigenous writers increased by half a percentage only to 2.5% in 2022. Similarly, the share of writers with disabilities continues to be markedly low (3%).

The full report is now available on the WGC’s website HERE.

The Writers Guild of Canada represents 2,500 professional English-language screenwriters across Canada—the creators of Canadian entertainment enjoyed o

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Industry News

Writers Guild of Canada releases new equity, diversity and inclusion data

From a media release:

The Writers Guild of Canada has released a new Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Report with 2020 data. The initiative is part of the WGC and its Diversity Committee’s efforts to work towards addressing issues of historic underrepresentation in Canadian television. (Diversity groups are defined by the WGC as Indigenous, Black, LGBTQ2S, People of Colour, People Living with Disabilities.)

The new report provides membership data from 2017 to 2020, and includes contract data from 62 live-action and animated series that started production in 2020, in addition to the 280 series previously covered in the period from 2017 to 2019.

The data shows some marked increases between 2019 and 2020 in key credit categories, including:

  • The share of writers from underrepresented communities receiving upper-level staffing credits increased in multiple categories, including Co-Executive Producer (from 25% in 2019 to 28% in 2020) and Consulting Producer (from 24% in 2019 to 33% in 2020).
  • The combined share of Black and People of Colour who received credits for entry-level Story Editor and Executive Story Editor positions rose in 2020 by 14% to 46.9% and by 5.5% to 52.6%, respectively. Both categories of credits have reached a parity zone, when population numbers in urban centres where writers’ rooms are often located are considered (visible minorities make 54% of the population in Toronto and 51% in Vancouver).
  • Black writers have made strides to achieve representation in live action that is on-par with population numbers. The percentage of Black writers in live-action writers’ rooms increased from 8% in 2019 to 9.2% in 2020 and is slightly higher than population numbers in highly dense population centres like Toronto and Montreal. Other indicators such as writing credits show that there is still room for improvement.

Other observations on the 2020 data include:

  • The participation of Indigenous writers decreased across the board in 2020. The share of Indigenous writers working on Canadian TV dropped to 1% in 2020 from 4% in 2019. No Indigenous writers were engaged in animation productions during the same period.
  • The share of East Asian (1.4% in 2019 to 2.8% in 2020) and South Asian (3.2% in 2019 to 3.6% in 2020) writers increased slightly, but there’s still work to do to achieve representation on-par with Canadian population numbers.
  • The share of writing credits received by LGBTQ2S writers decreased across different formats. In live action, credits dropped from 8.6% in 2019 to 6.9% in 2020. When it comes to animation, writing credits going to LGBTQ2S writers decreased from 4.1% to 1.7% during the same period.

The full report is now available on the WGC’s website HERE.

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