While the number of diverse members joining the Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) is rising, their share of work is in decline, according to the guild’s latest Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Report.
Published Wednesday (Oct. 25), the annual report provides membership data from 2017 to 2022 and, for the first time, includes earnings data.
Overall, the report shows that diverse representation within the WGC has continued to increase over the last five years. The overall percentage of members identifying as diverse came to 15.8% in 2022, compared to 12.3% in 2021. The WGC defines diverse as being part of one or more of the following groups: Indigenous, Black, people of colour, LGBTQ2S and people with disabilities.
The report highlighted that WGC’s percentage of Indigenous writers and writers with disabilities grew to 7% in 2022, compared to 5% and 4%, respectively, in the previous year. The percentage of members with intersectional identities came to 17%, up from 12% in 2021.
However, the percentage of writing jobs held by diverse writers decreased in 2022, falling to 35% compared to 41% in 2021. The decline was attributed to the percentage of positions held by writers of colour, which dropped to 16% in 2022 compared to 24% in the previous year.
Declines were reported across live action and animation, with diverse writers accounting for 40% of live action work in 2022 (from 44.8% in 2021) and 28.1% in animation (from 33.5%).
The earnings data also showed that the percentage of diverse writers earning more than $200,000 from writing contracts in 2022 came to 3%, which is less than half of the 7.9% of white, cisgender, heterosexual and non-disabled writers that crossed the earnings threshold. Notably, not a single Indigenous member of the WGC earned more than $200,000 in 2022.
The report also highlighted an earnings gap for animation. While 31.4% of WGC’s overall members work in animation, the percentage of earnings in animation came to 17.6% of total compensation. In comparison, while 78% of WGC members worked in live action, earnings in live action accounted for 82.4% of total compensation. The variances are attributed to lower animation writing fees.
The WGC also pointed to other gaps in compensation in animation, noting that diverse writers represented 8.6% of working animation writers but only 2.2% of earnings, while non-diverse animation writers accounted for 22.9% of the workforce and 15.4% of earnings.
Also highlighted in the report is a continued decline in the volume of work available for WGC members. WGC said the number of one-hour drama episodes decreased by 12% between 2017 and 2022, and the number of half-hour live-action episodes has fallen by 14%. The largest declines have been in children’s content, with the number of half-hour children’s live-action episodes down by 44%, and the number of half-hour animation episodes by 85%.
The full report is available on the WGC website.
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