Called Time’s Up, the movement was announced on Monday with an impassioned pledge of support to working-class women in an open letter signed by hundreds of women in show business, many of them A-listers. The letter also ran as a full-page ad in The New York Times, and in La Opinion, a Spanish-language newspaper. “The struggle for women to break in, to rise up the ranks and to simply be heard and acknowledged in male-dominated workplaces must end; time’s up on this impenetrable monopoly,” the letter says.

“Male producers, directors and actors have the power to make and break these women’s careers, and so routinely and aggressively proposition them, or at the very least let it be known that a willingness to grant sexual favours would help a woman professionally.”

While Hollywood has been overrun with the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the harsh light it has thrown on widespread gender imbalances throughout the industry, movie screens nationwide have been aglow with ambitious films by female directors who are beating the odds stacked against them.

"Women are still more likely than men to play “personal-life oriented roles,” like wives and mothers, while men are more likely to be defined by their occupations."