Blue Ant Media says it exceeded its gender parity target for commissioned programs in 2021.

The Toronto-based producer, distributor and channel operator’s Gender Parity Status Report for 2021 says 9/10 or 90% of its projects last year had 50% of key creative positions held by women. That’s higher than its goal of gender parity in 70% of its commissioned programs in 2021.

The 2021 goal is part of a phased-in process to reach the company’s overall gender parity target submitted in an action plan to the CRTC in September 2019. That overall goal is to achieve gender parity in key creative positions in Canadian commissioned original productions for its eight discretionary television services by the end of broadcast year 2024.

The key creative positions outlined in the goal include broadcast executive, executive producer, series producer, director, head of production (line producer) and story editor.

Blue Ant original Canadian productions that had 6/6 key roles held by women in 2021 included season two of Hotel Paranormal (Saloon Media), season three of Haunted Hospitals (Bristow Global Media, a Sphere Media Company), Extreme Weather Salvage (Saloon Media) and Bathsheba: Search for Evil (Cream Productions).

Encounter UFO (Saloon Media) had 5/6 key roles held by women, while Impossible Repairs (Attraction Productions), Web of Darkness (Saloon Media) and A Ghost Ruined My Life (Cream Productions) all had women in 4/6 key roles. On Searching for Secrets, 3/6 roles were women (Saloon Media).

Gender parity was not achieved on Wild Pacific Rescue (White Pine Productions), where 2/6 key roles were women.

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