In an editor’s letter published on its site today, The Hollywood Reporter’s president and chief creative officer, Janice Min, announced that the publication and its sister publication Billboard will cease the annual tradition of ranking women in the music and entertainment businesses. Min wrote that as “a female editor covering an industry that, in terms of gender, remains persistently stuck,” she worries that the publication’s “Women in Entertainment Power 100” list was contributing to the problem of gender inequality in Hollywood:
I’ve come to believe that something as simple as our ranked women’s lists contributes to keeping that sense alive, that we accidentally created a beauty pageant of brains where only one woman gets crowned. Some women have publicly cried upon seeing their rankings. That is funny to some people. But it’s depressing as hell to me.
Min says she had “a nagging sense” the THR ranked list of 100 women and the list of 50 ranked women in music at Billboard were not serving their “intended goal.” Instead, to replace the rankings on both sites, the publications will host a “single annual class of a Power 100 (Hollywood Reporter) and a Power 50 (Billboard).” Though Min says she isn’t sure what kind of impact this change will make, she hopes that it will challenge the “groups of women we cover, who create content, who move billions of dollars of business, to work together. To hunt as a pack.”
