Family violence and abuse lecture, with COVID pandemic discussion

I recorded a video lecture on the subject of family violence and abuse, including intimate partner violence, rape, and sexual abuse, with some discussion of the COVID pandemic implications.

The 24-minute video is on YouTube here:

Related pieces that came out after I recorded this:

• The Telegraph: ‘I have five minutes and I need help’: Life on the domestic abuse frontline during coronavirus
• New York Times: Why a Drop in Domestic Violence Reports Might Not Be a Good Sign
• New York Times: A New Covid-19 Crisis: Domestic Abuse Rises Worldwide
• UN Women: Violence against women and girls: the shadow pandemic
• NPR: Child Sexual Abuse Reports Are On The Rise Amid Lockdown Orders

• Washington Post: With kids stuck at home, ER doctors see more severe cases of child abuse
• New York Times: Child Abuse Cases Drop 51 Percent. The Authorities Are Very Worried

The amazing lack of gender progress in Hollywood, Weinstein and not

With gender and Hollywood in the news because of the Harvey Weinstein revelations, I haven’t seen anyone count up the women who produced his movies. I counted off every tenth movie from his 300 or so producer credits on IMDB, and eyeballed their names (or images) for gender. The result: 23% of 373 producers were women.* (Some have a lot of producers, but if you use movies as the unit of analysis the average is also 23%.)

Here is the breakdown of these 30 movies, by decade:

Weinstein seems to be right in line with the industry on this. (With a range of 5 to 70 producers listed, none had more than 50% female producer teams.) Producer jobs are the most gender integrated of the major behind-the-scenes leadership positions in Hollywood movies, as reported by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. And, like the other major positions, in his movies and in general, there is zero movement toward gender integration in the last two decades.

In turn, Hollywood looks a lot like the economy in general, which also shows basically no progress on integrating women into leadership positions over the last two decades. Here is percent female among those employed in managerial occupations (using the IPUMS occ1990 coding scheme for consistency):

Putting women in top leadership positions is not a panacea for gender inequality. But for the sexual harassment situation I am quite sure it would help a lot. Harvey Weinstein’s sex crimes may or may not have been an open secret in Hollywood, but the lack of women in positions across the industry, and the economy, is plain for all to see — and to act on, if they choose.

For other posts on movies, mostly having to do with gender, follow the movie tag.

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* If someone wants to code all of his movies I’ll happily update this. Here’s the list I generated:

	Year	Men	Women	Percent Female
The Burning	1981	5	0	0.00
The Pope Must Diet	1991	7	1	0.13
Pulp Fiction	1994	6	1	0.14
Jane Eyre	1996	6	2	0.25
I’m Crazy About Iris Blond	1996	4	1	0.20
Cop Land	1997	8	2	0.20
Wide Awake	1998	6	2	0.25
Talk of Angels	1998	3	3	0.50
In Too Deep	1999	6	1	0.14
About Adam	2000	4	4	0.50
Backstage	2000	7	3	0.30
Mimic 2	2001	5	1	0.17
Heaven	2002	10	5	0.33
Chicago	2002	8	3	0.27
Bad Santa	2003	7	1	0.13
Finding Neverland	2004	6	3	0.33
The Brothers Grimm	2005	11	0	0.00
Scary Movie 4	2006	5	2	0.29
Death Proof	2007	6	4	0.40
The Great Debaters	2007	6	4	0.40
The Meerkats	2008	7	1	0.13
Halloween II	2009	10	1	0.09
The King’s Speech	2010	14	1	0.07
I Don’t Know How She Does It	2011	5	4	0.44
Escape from Planet Earth	2013	13	3	0.19
Lee Daniels’ The Butler	2013	31	10	0.24
Suite Francais	2014	8	4	0.33
Regression	2015	13	2	0.13
Wild Oats	2016	54	16	0.23
The Upside	2017	7	0	0.00
	Total	288	85	0.23