Hollywood powerbroker warns of ‘profound betrayal’ on gender equity

Hollywood powerbroker Sarah Harden says Australia should be leading the world in gender equity, but instead is falling behind.

Geelong-born Harden started the $1.2 billion production company Hello Sunshine with actor Reese Witherspoon, and has built her career on telling women’s stories in productions including Big Little Lies and Morning Wars.

Hello Sunshine chief executive Sarah Harden says little progress has been made on gender equity. Credit: Eddie Jim

Ahead of her keynote address at the Chief Executive Women leadership summit in Melbourne on Tuesday, Harden told The Age she felt a sense of “profound betrayal” when she looked at how little progress had been made on gender equity.

“We’re in a world, a system that’s not operating in good faith,” she said. “At its worst, it feels like the system’s rigged and at its best, it’s very resistant to giving women any true power.”

Harden said empowerment feminism sold women a myth that they should “lean in”, work hard, carry themselves with confidence and that if they did, the world would become a better place.

“It’s broken, it hasn’t delivered on its promises,” she said. Harden said Australia should be leading the world, but instead was falling behind.

“Relative to the countries in the rest of the world, we have so much privilege,” she said. “It’s even more incumbent on us to not only drive solutions and change that are going to make Australian equality possible, but also we have a responsibility globally to do that as well.”

Harden said the “last feminist frontier” was the unequal load on women in the home, which Hello Sunshine highlighted in its Fair Play documentary based on Eve Rodsky’s book of the same title.

“If you want women to step into their full power in the workplace we have to address the invisible labour women do in our homes,” she said. “We have to have better partnerships in our homes, and it’s not just for women, it also liberates men who can be full parents and full fathers as well.”

Harden said it took her a long time to fully understand the extra burdens women faced.

Hello Sunshine head of film and television Lauren Levy Neustadter (left), Reese Witherspoon and chief executive Sarah Harden at The Hollywood Reporter’s Power 100 Women in Entertainment awards. Credit: Alberto E Rodriguez

“When you look at what systemically has been stacked against us – inadequate child care support, terrible pay equity, all of the unconscious and conscious bias, the deep misogyny ... in our culture – just the fact we’re all showing up today here doing the work, it’s heroic, it’s revolutionary,” she said.

While white cisgender women experienced disadvantage, she said it was undeniably worse for women of colour, LGBTQIA and disabled women.

Hello Sunshine, started by Harden and Witherspoon in 2016, focuses on highlighting the stories of women and minority groups that have largely been ignored by the male-dominated entertainment sector, with the aim of changing the narrative for women.

Reese Witherspoon (centre) and Big Little Lies castmates (from left) Shailene Woodley, Zoe Kravitz, Nicole Kidman and Laura Dern.Credit: HBO/Fox Showcase

“If you want to change your stories, you have got to change the storytellers,” Harden said.

Harden recalled a day driving from the Hello Sunshine office and experiencing a feeling she had never felt.

“That feeling was the opposite of loneliness,” she said. “I realised how profoundly lonely I’ve been my whole career. You look at the data, I’ve been the 2 per cent, the 5 per cent, the 10 per cent, the 20 per cent, the woman who is the one in 50 who is raising venture capital, the most senior person in the room, but you are the one asked to get the coffee, all of that stuff.”

To drive change, Harden said women and men needed to work together, and ask what they could do individually and collectively.

“It’s the only way, when you look ahead at the bravery and leadership that is going to be required in the next 10 to 20 years,” she said.

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