Scandal, Social Movement, and Change: Evidence from #MeToo in Hollywood

Abstract

Social movements have the potential to effect change in strategic decision making. In this paper, we examine whether the #MeToo movement, spurred by the Harvey Weinstein scandal, leads to changes in the likelihood of Hollywood producers working with female writers on new movie projects. Because #MeToo affected the entire industry, we use variation in whether producers had past collaborations with Weinstein to investigate whether and how #MeToo may spur change. We find that producers previously associated with Weinstein are, on average, about 35% more likely to work with female writers after the scandal than they were before, relative to nonassociated producers, and the size of this effect increases with the intensity of the association. Female producers are the main drivers of our results, perhaps because they are more likely than male producers to resonate with the movement’s cause and face relatively low costs of enacting change. Changes made by other groups, such as production teams with the most intense association with Weinstein and less experienced all-male teams, may be better explained by motivations to mitigate risk. We also find that producers do not sacrifice writer experience by hiring more female writers and that both experienced and novice female writers have benefited from the increased demand. Our study shows that social movements that seek to address gender inequality can, indeed, lead to meaningful change. It also provides perspective for thinking about whether, and to what extent, changes may occur in broader settings.

Culture Creation and Change: Making Sense of the Past to Inform Future Research Agendas

“…In the 1960s–1970s, mass social movements “in the streets” in the United States supporting social justice and antiwar ideals gave rise to widespread labor movements in the workplaces and stronger union cultures across organizations (Isaac, McDonald, & Lukasik, 2006). The Harvey Weinstein scandal in Hollywood and the rise of the #MeToo social media campaign against rampant sexual assault caused shifts in the culture of gender equality in Wall Street (Maaranen & Tienari, 2020) and changed hiring practices in Hollywood in an attempt to undo the widespread abusive culture of the industry (Luo & Zhang, 2021).…”

Who can claim innovation and benefit from it? Gender and expectancy violations in reward‐based crowdfunding

“…For example, the United Nations' HeForShe initiative has mobilized over 3 million people and is getting partners onboard to generate tangible solutions to accelerate gender equality (HeForShe, 2022). These and other social gender movements (e.g., #metoo) have had far‐reaching impacts, influencing phenomena from how the media describes entrepreneurs (Jernberg, Lindbäck, & Roos, 2020) to the hiring of women in VC firms (Calder‐Wang, Gompers, & Sweeney, 2021), and female writers in Hollywood (Luo & Zhang, 2022). This presents an opportunity for future research to examine how stereotype interventions and changes in stereotypes over time influence how female entrepreneurs pitch their ventures and the implications for their funding.…”

The Joker Myth as Mediated Stereotype in International Media Discourse

“…Class identity is understood as the link between individuals' attitudes, beliefs, interests, and their socioeconomic position, while race identity is constructed within groups which share a common heritage (Kellner and Share 2019). Gender identity is constructed based on male/ female biological and socio-cultural categories of differentiations, which are often internalized as concepts of self on an individual level (Luo and Zhang 2020;Kellner and Share 2019;Erigha 2015).…”

“…14) associated with the Joker are celebrities and individuals (f=438) such as David Beckham, Willem Dafoe, Catherine Zeta-Jones, political actors and leaders (f=379), such as Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George Bush, David Cameron, countries and cities (f=289) like America, England, London, Los Angeles, film characters (f=178), film industry and films (f=139), sports associations and competitions (f=76), criminals (f=55), governments (f=68), media (f=69), events and protests (f=40), national organisations (f=29), international organisations (f=12), law enforcement agencies (f=10), national and international officials (f=9), law enforcement agents (f=5). Since the research is preoccupied with aspects of identity representation present in the deployment of the Joker myth, the relevant sub-codes for semiotic analysis are: class, gender, race (Luo and Zhang 2020;Kellner and Share 2019;Erigha 2015), and mental illness (Chandler 2007;Camp et al 2010), wherever present. In terms of class, the sub-codes of interest for meme analysis are appearance, commodity, and text/language.…”