For the past five years NZ On Air has published a Diversity Report as both a response to, and a contribution towards, discussions about gender, ethnicity and regional production representation in the local screen sector. NZ On Air, as a key funder of local content, is in a unique position to report industry trends.
This report monitors gender and ethnic diversity among key personnel of NZ On Air-funded projects, as well as regional spread of production companies. This report also monitors the gender balance among applicants and recipients of NZ On Air music funding over a four year period for New Music Single and New Music Project funding.
The 2020 Diversity Report includes survey responses from 164 Scripted and Factual projects funded between 2019 and 2020 that were fully delivered by March 2020, and not included in last year’s report.
Now that we have five consecutive years of data, we can report on consistent trends in several areas of the NZ On Air funded production sectors.
The key findings are:
- Women continue to be well represented among producers and writers, making up 58% of producers surveyed and 49% of writers this year but the gender imbalance among directors continues – with 41.9% of directors identifying as female in the latest survey, compared to 57.4% male.
- In 2020, 23.5% of producers identified as Māori, an increase on the previous year.
- Male directors have outnumbered women in the genres of drama, documentary and children’s programming across the previous three years of this report and in this year’s report male directors make up 63% of drama directors and 65% of directors of children’s content. Women number 55% of documentary directors.
- There is a consistent under-representation of Asian creatives in all three roles surveyed: producer, director and writer/researcher.
- Auckland still dominates as the centre of production and remains the most ethnically diverse of the main centres.
- The number of female music artists funded, whilst in line with the percentage that applied, continues to be significantly lower than male artists. In most music funding rounds women make up 20-30% of funding applicants.
