16% of films and 14% of primetime television is written by women.

[LARLARLAND]

Report from the Writers' Guild, published today, sets out the depressing truth about female writers in the UK.

writersguild.org.uk/equalitywrites/

Sadly unsurprising - I believe figures are similar when you look at journalism and other media.

It’s a loop. The less female writers there are the less there are likely to be, due to a culture of a boys club. The less female writers there are, the less women are represented in film and tv as characters. And then as a result of this, the less decent parts there are for actresses. Also, women and girls watching film / tv are consuming the reality that it’s an industry that doesn’t include or reflect their life and experience.

The aims of the group you linked to seem good

“• Programme-level TV equality monitoring data to be released.

• Public funders to pledge a 50/50 split between male and female-written films by 2020.”

Yes, the more women there are senior positions in the industry the more likely there will be change. The BBC in particular should be ashamed. I heard recently that only 2 episodes of Silent Witness, (a show which has helped a lot of writers go on to other things) have been written by women. That’s two shows in twenty years.

I'm surprised it's even that high TBH!

It's no wonder we have these weird social expectations of women, we grow up being told stories by men, where women are whiny, bitchy, competitive and mean, and rarely come across as real people.

I loved "The Fabulous Mrs Maisel" recently where it portrayed women just getting on, in the same way they do for the most part in my everyday life.

Prime example of a man writing a female character and getting it horribly wrong is Doctor Foster. I hated it.

Ah! That explains why 84% of telly is not young prostituted women being horrifically murdered.

Y’know when someone cracks a “joke” which really isn’t funny at all and just draws blank looks and silence, and all you can say is.....

Anyway.....

Larlarland that’s a really good point about the BBC, shouldn’t they have some kind of higher duty towards equality.

I wonder if there is any kind of analysis anywhere of male vs female characters on tv shows and how the sex of the writer correlates. You could relate to bechdel test as well.

Yes. Men telling us stories about ourselves. How can that be right?

Men telling us stories about ourselves. How can that be right?

It helps make sure we know how they expect us to behave. Which sadly mostly means either as a victim or if we are really lucky, an emotionally supportive sidekick.

yes

Btw I don’t think being male automatically means that a person is unable to write female characters well; if tv show characters were limited to reflecting the sex/age/ethnicity etc of the writer(s) we’d have some pretty weird tv shows. But Larlar is right that characters like Doctor Foster just show how wrong some men can get it when trying to write a woman. still found it weirdly addictive despite being terrible plot/writing though

It’s just yet another area of life where “female” is being treated as a minority when we are not a blooming minority.

It really upsets me that whilst many women try to break into the industry (applications for industry related courses are roughly 50/50) their careers are not progressing further and this is happening on a massive scale. The way commissioning decisions are made is highly subjective which clearly means that where men have the opportunity to thwart women’s progress they are taking that opportunity and running with it. I probably haven’t explained that very well but I hope that makes sense to people

And the other horrible statistic is that 9% of comedy in the UK is written by women.

I have heard from friends in this industry that it is also horribly ageist (when you are a woman)

What kind of things can non-industry individuals do, I wonder, to support women writers, producers, directors, comedians etc. Apart from watch/listen/attend/give positive feedback when we do get the opportunity to see their work.

Cwenthryth I suppose the only thing people can do is try to keep the issue alive on social media or contact the broadcasters directly and ask them to explain themselves. The BBC at least would be obliged to answer questions under the FOI Act.