UC Santa Barbara

This article discusses how employment practices concerning writers of film and television contribute to gender inequality and the glass ceiling in Hollywood. Relying on historical evidence about the industries of film and television and quantitative data from analyses of the employment and membership records of the Writers Guild of America, West, the union for film and television writers in Hollywood, this article presents an overview of the industry's historical transformation from hierarchy to market in order to understand the nature of Hollywood's employment relation. It then examines how the dynamics associated with the participation of women writers contribute to particular forms of gender inequality in film and television. The conclusion considers why proven remedies for minimizing gender inequality are so difficult to achieve in the culture industry of Hollywood. © 2009 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.