The impact of Hollywood’s #MeToo reckoning may be continuing to pay off, according to a new survey conducted by Women in Film (WIF). On the sixth anniversary of the groundbreaking New York Times exposé outing mega-producer Harvey Weinstein as a serial abuser, WIF unveiled its 2023 survey results involving workplace harassment and assault. The Weinstein saga was captured in the 2022 film “She Said”; the former Miramax and Weinstein Company executive is currently serving decades in prison and facing a new lawsuit from actress Julia Ormond.
The 2023 WIF survey polled 266 respondents throughout the entertainment industry, with answers being accumulated between September 11 and September 22, 2023. Respondents are current or former screen industry employees, with 95.4 percent of respondents identifying as women, 1.9 percent as men, and 2.7 percent identifying as nonbinary or another gender; 1.1 percent of respondents identify as trans.
The results showed that 59 percent of respondents believe that the culture around abuse/harassment/misconduct in Hollywood has improved in the year since the 2022 survey. However, 46.2 percent of respondents still say they or someone they know experienced abuse or misconduct while working in the screen industries in the last year. While this is a 33.7 percent decrease compared to the 2022 survey, it’s still almost half of the respondents.
To note, 37.6 percent respondents thought there was “little to no change” from 2022 to 2023 in terms of the prevalence of toxic workplaces. For people who identify as former entertainment industry workers, 48.3 percent said they left the industry due to abuse or misconduct.
The WIF Help Line, created in December 2017 to report harassment or abuse on set, was expanded in 2022 to include any facet of the entertainment industry, not just on-set encounters. In the past year, 20 percent of callers experienced assault, with 91 percent seeking emotional and mental health support.
WIF was founded in 1973 to “dismantle gender bias in the screen industries by building the pipeline, sustainable careers, and advocating for change.”
The past year has most recently seen the outing of “Rick and Morty” co-creator Justin Roiland amid claims of sexual harassment, as well as a scrapped Louis C.K. documentary following allegations of assault.