When Movements Lose Momentum: What Cate Blanchett’s Cannes Comments Reveal About Gender Equity

Cate Blanchett’s recent comments at the Cannes Film Festival were striking not because they were shocking, but because they were familiar.

When Blanchett said the #MeToo movement “got killed very quickly,” she captured something many women—and many thoughtful men in the middle—have quietly observed across industries, not just Hollywood. 

Movements often begin with momentum, visibility, and urgency. Organizations pledge change. Leaders speak publicly. Panels are held. Statements are written. Yet over time, discomfort creeps in. Fatigue sets in. Polarization grows. And eventually, many systems revert back to what feels familiar.

That pattern sits at the heart of my research and my book, Men-In-The-Middle: Conversations to Gain Momentum with Gender Equity’s Silent Majority.

What Blanchett described is not simply backlash. It is what happens when awareness outpaces relational change.

For years, conversations about gender equity have often been framed as ideological battles rather than human conversations. The result? Many people who might have supported change quietly disengaged. Some feared saying the wrong thing. Others felt blamed rather than invited. Still others supported equity privately but withdrew publicly because the conversation became increasingly performative, political, or exhausting.

That is where “the middle” matters.

In my research, I found that sustainable progress rarely happens at the loudest edges of a movement. It happens in the middle spaces—inside teams, organizations, and everyday conversations—where people are still learning, questioning, hesitating, and trying to understand their role in change.

The challenge is that middle spaces are messy. They require curiosity instead of certainty. Listening instead of labeling. Progress instead of perfection.

Blanchett’s frustration about film sets still being overwhelmingly male reflects a deeper systems issue many industries share. Representation alone does not automatically create transformation. Visibility is not the same as culture change. 

And perhaps most importantly, movements cannot survive on outrage alone.

They survive when organizations build cultures where people feel safe enough to stay engaged in difficult conversations long after the headlines fade.

That is why I increasingly believe curiosity is one of the most underrated leadership skills in gender equity work.

Curiosity keeps conversations alive when defensiveness would otherwise shut them down.

Curiosity allows someone to ask:

• What else could be true?

• Why are people pulling away from this conversation?

• How do we invite more people into the work rather than sorting them into opposing camps?

• What systems quietly reward sameness while publicly celebrating inclusion?

The irony is that many people who withdrew from gender equity conversations were not necessarily against equity. They were against the feeling that there was no room for complexity, uncertainty, or dialogue.

That matters.

Because lasting cultural change does not happen when only activists participate. It happens when everyday leaders, managers, peers, and colleagues decide to remain in the conversation—even imperfectly.

Back in 2018, Blanchett stood alongside 81 women at Cannes to protest the lack of female directors represented at the festival. The symbolism was powerful. 

But symbols alone are not systems.

The harder work comes afterward:

• changing hiring pipelines,

• shifting leadership norms,

• redesigning power structures,

• and creating cultures where inclusion is not dependent on the emotional energy of a movement cycle.

  
  

That is why the next chapter of gender equity work may require less performance and more practice.

Less outrage theater. More courageous curiosity.

Less assumption. More conversation.

Less “us versus them.” More “how do we move forward together?”

Because if the goal is lasting momentum—not temporary visibility—we cannot afford to lose the middle.