Statement on International Women's Day

Celebrating International Women’s Day 2021

The European Video-on-Demand (VOD) Coalition welcomes and celebrates International Women’s Day 2021

Women represent half the world’s population yet are still underrepresented both in front of and behind the camera. One of our Coalition priorities is to highlight and support the creativity and innovation within the entertainment industry. We firmly believe that gender diversity and inclusion are vital ingredients to achieve further progress in these areas.

In this light we strongly support the European Commission’s Action 8 (“Fostering European media talents”) in its recently released Media and Audiovisual Action Plan and remain committed to showcasing female creators and talent from all over Europe and the world.

For more information about the European VOD Coalition visit: europeanvodcoalition.com

Examples of gender equality initiatives some of our member companies are supporting

Sooner Benelux has been committed to equal gender representation within its team since its foundation and has always strived for equal representation in both its governance and operational teams. Sooner Benelux is also committed to the constant enhancement and promotions of its collections, cycles and retrospectives of films made, produced, and performed by women, showcasing the full diversity of cinema and female talent. In 2021, Sooner Benelux is taking things even one step further by building a partnership with Elles Tournent, and supporting Grains de Cinéastes, a new festival dedicated for new female talent filmmakers. Sooner will host Graines de Cinéastes on its platform and promote the first short films of female directors to give new talent a voice and make them find a new audience. Furthermore, Sooner joins forces with CinéFemme in order to highlight a feminine perspective on cinema through the new collection CinéFemme Award.

Discovery is deeply committed to driving equal opportunities and empowering its female workforce. The Discovery Women’s Network is an internal organization that spreads across 15 Countries, bringing together over 400 like minded individuals committed to enhancing professional and personal development opportunities for women at Discovery. The TVN chapter (established in 2018) has organized several high profile events to date (internally and externally), engaging senior leaders as well as journalists and talent. The DWN group has also joined forces with external partners such as the “Fearless” TEDXWarsawWomen conference in November 2020, which was sponsored by and broadcast exclusively on the TVN Player.

TVN Discovery Group is proud to be a creative hub for female producers, directors and screenwriters. Thanks to the TVN Talents programme we continuously offer a platform to new and emerging talent. What’s more, as one of the largest production houses in the region with so many inspiring female role models the company sets the standard for inclusivity and diversity for the entire industry in Poland.

Gender equality has been at the centre of NENT Group’s Inclusion and Diversity policy for many years. The beginning of 2021 marked an important milestone for NENT Group’s work to establish an equal and diverse leadership, with our executive leadership team achieving a 50/50 gender split reporting directly to our CEO, Anders Jensen. At the same time, NENT Group has been ranked number one in the Nordic Business Diversity Index (which measures the diversity of boards and executive management) in both the Stockholm Nasdaq Large Cap Companies and TMT (all Nordics) categories. We believe that our hard work with equality, diversity and inclusion leads to better decisions, greater creativity, increased engagement and a highly motivating sense of belonging and purpose among our people. NENT Group continues to support a gender balance in our creative value chain in scripted ( 53% male and 47 % female in 2020) and non-scripted (44 % male and 56% female in 2020) content. This covers Directors, Writers, Producers, Executive Producers, Hosts, Actors, Project Managers, Editors, and Post Producers.

There are many reasons why women make good leaders and we at Pickbox are well aware of that – their highly developed emotional intelligence can strongly impact their team by providing them support and motivation. Their refined ability to listen, adapt, nurture and have empathy for their team, as well as for themselves, can crucially impact and inspire their surroundings.

In a world where these amazing traits are recognized depending on the country and work sector, Pickbox is proud of being a female-oriented company, promoting women as team leaders and them being 80% of our workforce. This is often reflected on the content we select and present to our audience, which means interesting and inspiring stories that often broaden our viewers’ perspective on life.

On the occasion such as International Women’s Day, Pickbox sends out support to women as main characters not only on screen, but in TV and other industries around the world.

At Netflix, we recently launched our first inclusion report, providing a snapshot of representation within the company, how we plan to increase it, and how we cultivate a community of belonging and allyship. As our co-CEO and chief content officer Ted Sarandos explains: “inclusion on-screen starts with inclusion in our internal community.” Women make up half of our workforce (47.1%), including at the leadership level: directors and above (47.8%), vice presidents (43.7%) and senior leadership (47.6%). We also want to ensure that the next generation of women storytellers has more opportunities than the women who came before them. In this light, we recently announced the creation of the Netflix Fund for Creative Equity. We will invest $100 million dollars over the next five years in a combination of external organisations as well as bespoke Netflix programs that will help us to identify, train and provide job placement for up-and-coming talent globally.

At Sky, we are focused on building a sustainable approach that will improve our talent pipeline and address underrepresentation within the entire company, in front of and behind the camera. Initiatives including ‘Women in Home service” help achieve these goals including by encouraging more women engineers, as do many of our other initiatives. Our employee ‘Women@Sky’ network enables both men and women to connect and share experiences and provides personal development activities, while we continue to lead on wider diversity representation and inclusion.

As part of ViacomCBS’s commitment to diversity & inclusion, we endeavour to create an employee experience where everyone tangibly feels that their careers are nurtured, developed and constantly enriched. We launched our first ever internal Female Talent Program in December 2020 for women at director level and above, aimed at personal and professional growth. After all, it is our people who are at the heart of everything we do. The program is designed to take participants on a journey that encourages them to reflect on their professional network to support their career ambitions, while also using the power of allyship to supercharge career goals.

• Explore the idea of gendered leadership – what often holds talented women back taking an intersectional approach
• Encourage and challenge participants to explore their authentic self and manage perceptions
• Goal setting and career tracking, to actively learn and grow
• Leading in the new remote, hybrid world
• The programme focuses on the importance of engaging men as both formal and informal sponsors.