By Zoë Davis BFE
I’ve been going through this year’s Emmy nominations for picture editing. All 168 of them.
43 are women. That’s 25.6%.
So in 2026, at the top tier of recognition in our field, roughly three out of four nominated editors are men.
This isn’t an attack on those editors. Many of them are extraordinary. But the imbalance isn’t just a neat, merit-based snapshot of “who’s best.” It also shows who gets hired in the first place. And hiring, more often than we like to admit, starts with who’s visible.
It hasn’t always looked like this, or maybe it has, only the reasoning shifted. When Anne V. Coates, the Oscar-winning editor, started out in England, there were plenty of women in editorial. Over time, that faded. As she put it: “While it was just a background job, they let the women do it. But when people realized how interesting and creative editing could be, then the men elbowed the women out of the way and kind of took over.”
That was a long time ago. Still, the numbers make it hard to argue we’ve really moved on.
Streamers are spending more than ever, pouring money into content at levels that would’ve sounded unreal not that long ago. Yet plenty of editors who ought to be steering that work are sitting by the phone. This isn’t about a lack of experience, and it’s not that skilled editors suddenly disappeared. It’s something more basic, and harder to shake, editorial hiring hasn’t caught up with the way the industry operates now.
On most productions, hiring editors still runs on the old routine. A production manager reaches for the same internal list, the familiar names, the people they’ve booked before, the recommendations that came from a producer friend. When those editors aren’t free, the whole thing turns into a frantic hunt. Calls, WhatsApps, emails, quick “are you around?” messages, favours pulled, hours burned. And more often than anyone wants to say out loud, it ends exactly where it started, another hire from the same small pool of “known quantities.”
That pool leans male. Not because there aren’t outstanding women editors, or editors who came in through less traditional routes and are doing incredible work. They’re there. The problem is access. If you’re not already inside that circle, you don’t get the call. No call means no credits. No credits means you don’t enter the awards conversation. And if you never enter the conversation, you don’t get nominated.
It also creates a creative pinch point that rarely gets named. The projects getting greenlit are wider in scope than they used to be, more varied, more global, more ambitious. But the people shaping those stories in the edit often aren’t widening at the same pace. When the same editors keep cutting the same sorts of shows year after year, the craft starts to repeat itself. You can feel the echo.
Lizzie Gillett, Head of Documentary at Misfits Entertainment, summed it up in a LinkedIn post that clearly struck a chord: “It is very easy and natural for production companies and producers to always go back to the people they know and have worked with before, but there are huge limitations to doing that, both for individuals in our industry, for us as a production company and for the wider ecosystem.”
From the editor’s end, London-based Ben Lavington Martin BFE described the same pattern with a kind of clear-eyed bluntness: “The reality of freelance TV is that people are under pressure and they go back to people they know can deliver. Of course the problem is, if you are not already in that circle, it can feel like you are stood outside with your nose pressed against the window. There must be so many brilliant people we are simply not seeing.”
The cost of that system runs in both directions. In Australia, former post-production supervisor Tamara Meek stepped away from the industry after burnout, with crewing forming part of the pressure. The constant calls, after hours responses and responsibility of making fast decisions about who was offered work, meant she could never fully switch off. She now runs Inner Focus by Tam, providing Mental Health First Aid training for workplaces.
The data shows exactly who bears the cost of a hiring system built on familiarity. Boxed In found that women are 33% of editors on streaming programmes, compared to 17% on broadcast. At the same time, the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative reports that women were still just 20% of editors on the top 250 grossing films in 2025, exactly the same proportion as in 1998. A quarter of a century and almost no movement. Then you look back at this year’s Emmy list and you’re staring at 25.6%
And it goes further than established editors being ignored. Streamers say they want new voices, editors early in their careers who are ready for bigger work and can bring something fresh. Under the current setup, those people are often the hardest to spot, and the easiest to block without even meaning to.
The industry loves talking about diversity. It commissions studies. It hosts panels. It nods thoughtfully at screenings. Then, when the pressure’s on, a production manager grabs the phone and rings the same person they rang last time.
Panels don’t shift the hiring list. Changing who gets the call does.
Talent isn’t what’s missing. It never was. Visibility is.
That’s what platforms like StreamerPeople are trying to shift: a directory of screen editors with verified streaming credits, so productions can actually see who’s out there, who’s available, and contact them directly. Not because one platform magically erases systemic bias. But because the first step toward any shift is simple, you can’t hire someone you don’t know exists.
The editors who should be cutting the next wave of content are already out there. Some have credits you’d recognise immediately. Some are free right now. The real question is whether the industry is willing to build systems that make those people easy to find, or whether it keeps calling the same names, then acting surprised when the work starts to feel familiar again.
Zoe Davis BFE is a documentary editor with credits on Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and the BBC, and experience working alongside filmmakers including Walter Murch and Darren Aronofsky. She is co-founder of StreamerPeople (streamerpeople.com), a curated directory of screen editors with verified streaming credits, alongside business strategist and digital product leader Lyndal Reed, formerly of The Guardian News & Media Group.
Sources:
Emmy nominations data – counted from the official 47th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards nominations list, July 2026. Gender estimated by name and editors’ existing online presence; 168 unique nominees, 43 female (25.6%), 125 male (74.4%).
Anne Coates quote – interview with Walter Murch, editorsnet.com, May 2000.
Women editors on streaming vs broadcast (33% vs 17%) – Boxed In 2024-25 season report, September 2025.
Women editors on top 250 grossing films (20%, same as 1998) – Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, 2025 annual report.
Lizzie Gillet – LinkedIn post, published publicly.
Ben Lavington Martin BFE – LinkedIn comment, published publicly.
Tamara Meek – quote provided directly.
Pippa Considine
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