Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1339678
37 W I N T E R Q 4 I S S U E COVID-19 resulted in an industrywide shutdown of the film and TV businesses, and the death of George Floyd and other racially-tinged incidents sparked so- cial unrest over the summer. This spurred the Board to conduct a survey to address the issues of inclusion and discrimination. The Diversity Committee's 17-member Survey Task Force, led by Women's Committee Chair Dorian Harris, ACE, spent a month discussing and cre- ating a 14-question survey which went out to members on July 31, 2020. Guild officials say the results prove the need for more work on diversity and inclusion. "It is apparent to me the Guild needs to build a real support system for our BIPOC members, as well as women, LGBTQ+ community and people with dis- abilities, both visible and invisible. We are doing this through many different facets," said Cathy Repola, Na- tional Executive Director of the Guild. "One of them is this demographics survey, and the information collected from it is being utilized to inform our overall approach." Editors Guild President Alan Heim, ACE, added: "We at the Guild have a lot of work to do to get to a better level of equality, diversity, and inclu- sion. In order to do that work effectively, it is important to have real data on where we are currently, and we appreciate the input from our members who took the survey." DISCRIMINATION IN THE WORKPLACE The survey included questions regarding members' experience with discrimination in the workplace, asking respondents to describe how safe they felt reporting such incidents. According to the survey, 76.6% of the members believe discrimination occurs "often" or "sometimes" in the workplace. [Fig. 1] There was a sharp gender split: 37.0% of males felt safe to report discrimination to a superior or Human Resources, while only 6.1% of females felt safe to do so. [Fig. 2] At the end of the survey, participants were encour- aged to add comments about their own experiences M A L E F E M A L E O F T E N S O M E T I M E S R A R E LY N E V E R D EC L I N E TO A N S W E R 1 0 0 % 8 0 % 6 0 % 4 0 % 2 0 % 9. 2 % 1 7. 2 % 0 . 5 % 0 . 5 % 1 . 7 % 2 .1 % 1 4 . 6 % 4 . 0 % 1 0 .1 % 4 0 .1 % 0 % F I G U R E 1 D O Y O U B E L I E V E D I S C R I M I N A T I O N O C C U R S I N T H E W O R K P L A C E ? M A L E F E M A L E A LWAY S S O M E T I M E S N E V E R D EC L I N E TO A N S W E R 1 0 0 % 8 0 % 6 0 % 4 0 % 2 0 % 0 % 6 .1 % 1 5 . 8 % 6 . 3 % 5 . 7 % 1 . 3 % 2 . 3 % 3 7. 0 % 2 5 . 4 % F I G U R E 2 D O Y O U F E E L S A F E T O R E P O R T A N I N C I D E N T O F D I S C R I M I N A T I O N T O A S U P E R I O R O R H U M A N R E S O U R C E S ?