Actresses to publish The Story of #SilenceAction: The Triangle of Badness – Our Story
#TystnadTagning #SilenceAction
Beginning in 2018, 9th of November will be Actress Day. It will be celebrated to recall the publication of the actresses’ manifesto against sexual harassment, a day that marked a definite turning point in women’s history and in the public debate. 2018 will also see the publication of a book entitled, in Swedish, Så som vi minns det (literally: As We Recall it) describing the complete, true story behind #SilenceAction. All profits from the book will be used to pursue our activities in #SilenceAction and our aim: to achieve equality in the film and theater industries. Donations will gratefully also be put to this end.
#SilenceAction (in Swedish #TystnadTagning) arose out of the courage of hundreds of actresses in sharing their histories of sexual harassment and subjection to abuse of power in the theater and film industries. On the basis of this testimony, a group of actresses put forward a manifesto and turned the testimonies into a coherent text, which was then approved and signed by 703 professional actresses.
A wide-ranging collective of actresses created the form for #SilenceAction by presenting testimonies at public readings held all over Sweden, and actions such as ”hand in hand” carried out on the red carpet. We are currently involved in activities to achieve change at our workplaces. All these efforts have received international media attention as #SilenceAction. Our work gave others the strength to initiate similar activities. The form #SilenceAction arose thanks to the actresses’ strength in working as a collective – without a leader – which resulted in a group of 911 actresses in Sweden who are now a power factor that counts.
The results to date of #SilenceAction can be seen in a great deal of activity in the film and theater industries. We have met with a large number of the people in power in these fields. We are putting our experience into practice.
#SilenceAction has never and will never name and shame individuals. Our stance is that each of us must consider our responsibility for the structure of our industries. We will not point fingers at individuals, as if we believed that they were the only ones to exhibit destructive behavior. We intend to point out structural rather than individual problems.
#SilenceAction encourages everyone to participate in the courses and information in the area of equality being disseminated by theaters, producers and The Swedish Film Institute. Workplaces marked by equality are more profitable than others, as can be seen in a study carried out by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The study assessed 22,000 companies in different sectors in 91 countries and found that firms with more than 30% women in management were more profitable than others.
- We hereby also pay homage to all those who are working in many ways with the movements that arose after #SilenceAction, and who are contributing to creating a new reality. Our thanks are particularly direct to the group of sensitive journalists at the Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, for fantastic cooperation. And special thanks to Tarana Burke, the woman who coined the term under which we can all express our testimony as #metoo, from the actresses in #SilenceAction.
For further information, please contact: mediasilenceaction@gmail.com
For interview requests and press images, please contact:
Stephanie G. Bonn, Zap PR
Telephone: +46 70 775 61 10
E-mail: stephanie@zap-pr.com
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