Empower/Exploit: Saving Ourselves through Gender Equality

Did you know, according to Project Drawdown (a group of researchers identifying the most impactful ways to reduce carbon and mitigate climate change), Family Planning and High Quality Education for Girls will reduce/sequester 68.9 gigatons of CO2 between 2020 and 2050? This is the THIRD most impactful decarbonization strategy globally, after only Reduced Food Waste and Plant-Rich Diets. In the final days of Women's History Month, it seems fitting to discuss Sustainable Development Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls!

This CLEARLY SHOWS how activism around the climate crisis and ethical treatment of workers (and people in general) are undeniably intertwined. 

Each major Sustainable Development goal is broken into smaller Targets and Indicators. If you’ve ever had a goal before, you know how important it is to break the larger goal into smaller, specific, mini goals. For Goal 5, there are 3 Targets that are most applicable to theatre, entertainment and the costume profession.

Target 5.1: End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere. 

We see successes around this goal from many organizations fighting for pay and labor equity between the historically women dominated - pink collar - costume professionals and our counterparts in similar labor areas like lights and sets - examples include Costume Professionals for Wage Equity, On Our Team, and the “Naked Without Us” campaign led by the Costume Designers Guild. The pay and labor differences are clear discrimination, prioritizing one type of labor over another. When I was helping shape the budget of a small theatre company in Chicago many years ago, I advocated for labor support for our costume designer if the scenic designer was getting a TD. In that conversation, the other person insisted that it wasn’t necessary so I asked why he thought it was fair to give support to one designer but not the other. He told me “sets are big and complicated.” He did not see that costume labor can be equally complicated and also involve lots of lifting heavy objects, not unlike set building. If you’ve ever had to hike up 4 flights of stairs carrying 18th century gowns (looking at you “Gondoliers” at The Reskin,) then you know firsthand that it takes a high degree of expertise and physical labor to work in costumes!

Thanks to tireless reporting and independent oversight, we know that beyond the walls of our theatres and sound stages, the garments we order for costumes are made by a workforce that is 60% women globally. Often women have less power in factories than their male counterparts. By prioritizing ordering from factories that are Fair Trade certified or offer transparency into their supply manufacturing practices, we support women around the world in having a thriving livelihood and support for their families. Some other places that I look for information on brands using more ethical labor practices are the Fashion Revolution Transparency Index (particularly pages 18-19) and the Good On You app.

Beyond the issue of pay, there is safety (which also relates to SDG 8.) Monday was the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disaster, a galvanizing moment for the American labor movement where low-wage, women garment workers were front and center. One of my favorite podcasts, Dressed, just did an amazing two part dive into the history and impact of this moment. They emphasize that, even though this event happened 113 years ago, many of the types of labor abuses and safety issues that caused this tragedy are still commonplace in the garment industry today.

Target 5.4: Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate.

Many women I know in the costume profession are also the primary caregivers for their children. While I was in grad school, and for several years of my career, I have been the primary caregiver for my partner while he underwent treatment for cancer and related medical challenges. There are hours and hours of unpaid labor, lost wages, and professional stagnation that occur when anyone (often women) are tasked with caring for their family members. While this issue is bigger than the performing arts and entertainment industries, look for opportunities in your community to support childcare and domestic labor. A Bloomberg article published this week states: “Another figure Levy economists discovered was that nearly 80% of all of the unpaid work necessary to maintain a household and care for its family members is done by women. The cost of that comes to about $3.6 trillion a year.” That’s just in the US! This is a global issue, but one we can start fixing locally.

Target 5.5: Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life.

Thanks to the wonderful work of Porche McGovern, we have access to a data set that gives insight into the gender identities of theatre leadership and designers. These are the roles that hold the power for decision making within our industry. The costume profession in 2020  was the most “she” dominated design area, holding 70% of the design positions across the 7 years of McGovern’s study. However, women hold a larger number of design positions in the lower budget LORT theatres (70-80% at C-D in 2020) compared to larger budget, and therefore more powerful and influential large budget theaters (50-65% at A-B in 2020.) This increasing attrition of women from decision making roles holds true when we look at the most public and influential recognition of costume designers: the Tony Awards. 

In the same period as McGovern’s longitudinal data (2012-2020), women accounted for only 43.5% of Tony nominations (Wikipedia Tony…Design in a Musical & Tony…Design in a Play.) There are similar statistics on the lack of women in theatre leadership positions (Executive and Artistic Direction) at LORT theatres shown in this HowlRound article, which also has some wonderful proposed solutions, such as starting the search with self-examination about what the theatre needs and what criteria will help you meet those goals, if you are a staff costume professional, lend your voice to these conversations to ensure that women have an equal shot at a vacant leadership position.

Let's remember that the fight for gender equality is not just a crucial step toward a sustainable future, but also an ethical imperative, to guarantee equitable access to that same future. The interconnection between empowering women and tackling climate change, as highlighted by Project Drawdown and the United Nations, underscores the profound impact of gender equality on global sustainability. In our theatres, our costume departments, and our daily lives, we have the power to champion change. If you were not already committed to women's equality in your theatres, teams, activism, and purchasing choices, I hope this writing convinced you that it’s worth it.

Articles like this are usually exclusive to our patrons, but this one was too important to keep behind a paywall. We’d really love to have you as a Conscious Colleague, supporting research, writing, and resources like this!

P.S. World Water Day was last week (March 22nd) and I got chatting with Rachel Pollock because I knew she’d done some great work on conserving water when dying during a drought! Take a look:

This 5 minute video is PACKED with mindset shifts, innovative ideas, and how to make considered choices in the costume profession as relates to water use. 

For written resources, she’s consolidated past blog posts here on the topic of drought conscious costume practices.