Gender inequality protesters crash red carpet at Australian film awards dressed as sausages

Protesters dressed as sausages crashed the red carpet at the 6th annual Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards in protest against gender inequality.

Around a dozen women crashed the red carpet dressed in their brown fabric suits, handing out pamphlets and chanting "End the sausage party! Stop the sausage party!"

News.com.au reported that the group got into an altercation with the carpet's security staff.

"They were three sausages to a security guard and tried to take them down. And they tried to drag them. They would sit on the ground and try to pull the security down with them.

"They were dressed like sausages but also looked like walnuts. They were handing out pamphlets but it doesn't seem like anyone got one."

Footage was posted to Twitter of the scuffle, and showed one protester being forcibly removed by the security team.

"Security got a handle on them ... they were giving as good as they got," Bond said.

Protesters dressed as sausages chanting to "end the sausage party" of the Aust. film industry forcefully ejected from #aactas red carpet pic.twitter.com/8aeM0p1UdV

— steph harmon (@stephharmon) December 7, 2016

The protest was organised by the Women in Film and Television group. Their founder, Sophie Mathisen, told the Guardian that they wanted to make a bold statement.

"AACTA purports to be a celebration of Australia screen excellence, and at the moment it's a celebration of a very, very narrow part of the industry.

"There are a huge number of women that are working outside of the system that don't even get a look-in."

The group is hoping to have gender parity in the Australian film industry by 2021. Only 37 per cent of films submitted to AACTA over 10 years were produced by women.

Female-led projects were big winners at the ceremony. Isla Fisher won the Trailblazer Award for international achievement, while the Elizabeth Debicki-led Kettering Incident got Best Mini-Series.

The awards were ultimately dominated by Mel Gibson, though, who claimed Best Direction and Picture for his war movie Hacksaw Ridge.