Equity and Equalities

In the Equity Rule Book under the section 'Objects' of the union, Equity commits itself:

"to promote equality for all including through:

(a) collective bargaining, publicity material and campaigning, representation, union organisation and structures, training, organising and recruitment, the provision of all other services and benefits and all other activities;
(b) the union's own employment practices

and

"to oppose actively all forms of harassment, prejudice and unfair discrimination whether on the grounds of sex, race, ethnic or national origin, religion, colour, class, caring responsibilities, marital status, sexuality, disability, age, or other status or personal characteristic"

To deliver these commitments Equity appointed its first Equalities Officer, Max Beckmann, in 2006. She is responsible for ensuring that equal opportunities remain high on Equity's agenda and that the union does everything it can to represent and campaign for the rights of all our members.

The Equalities Officer works closely with Equity's four equal opportunities committees, which act as specialist advisory committees to the Equity Council. Equity's four equal opportunities committee are the:

  • Members with Disabilities Committee
  • LGBT Committee
  • Minority Ethnic Members Committee
  • Women's Committee

If you wish to contact any of these committees for information or advice about your rights, or to share your experience with the committee, you can send an email to the following address:

You can also contact our Equalities Officer, Max Beckmann, on 0207 670 0223 or email to mbeckmann@equity.org.uk Please be assured that all enquiries will be treated with the utmost confidentiality.

In order to promote the work opportunities available to our disabled and our minority ethnic members, Equity maintains with The Spotlight two specialist casting directories as follows:

  • Equity/Spotlight directory of Disabled Members
  • Equity/Spotlight directory of Minority Ethnic Members

These casting directories are widely used by casting directors, producers etc and they are free to join for Equity members. In order to appear in the directory you will need to complete an application form, available from the Equalities Officer on 020 7670 0251 or mbeckmann@equity.org.uk.When returned to Equity the Equalities Officer will verify that the applicant is an Equity member and forward the application to The Spotlight for inclusion in the casting directory. Disabled members who appear in the Equity/Spotlight directory of Disabled Members are also eligible for a 50% reduction in the fee to appear in either Spotlight Actors or Spotlight Actresses.

In addition to these directories, Equity maintains its own registers of disabled, minority ethnic and LGBT members. Our registers are maintained to enable us to contact you with information relevant to being a disabled, minority ethnic, LGBT member etc and to invite you to events, such as the Diversity Conference Equity held in November 07 or to an Open Meeting of an equality committee. Equity's registers also enable the union to communicate with these sections of our membership during committee election time.

Each of the four equal opportunities committees has formulated a two-year work plan in order to deliver greater employment opportunities and a fairer playing field for under-represented groups of our membership. To find out more about the equal opportunities work of the union and the work of Equity's four equality committees, Equity members should go to the Committees Section of the Members Area of this website.

Current initiatives include:

  • Working with European actors unions and with FIA (Federation of International Actors) to raise awareness and find solutions to ongoing age discrimination in the sector, particularly that faced by older women members;
  • Campaigning for local education authorities and educational service providers to commission theatre in education on the subject of homophobic and transphobic bullying;
  • Working with our colleagues in the Federation of Entertainment Unions (FEU) to deliver and FEU-wide race equality and diversity programme;
  • Encouraging writers to write scripts which encourage the integrated casting of disabled performers.

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