Women Just Aren't As Funny As Lads



"Last year, when reviewing the gender balance of sitcom scripts she was sent, she realised that for every script she received from a female writer, she got five from men."

:eek: And how is that her problem? Is anyone surprised more men are trying to make it in comedy than women?




"There can all too often be a sense of tokenism towards the lone female," she wrote on the Comedy 50:50 website. "Or the dominant perception is that the female is there purely so the production can hit quotas."

She has now changed ITV's contracts so any shows that are commissioned or recommissioned "must aim towards 50:50 gender representation".

Head of Comedy doesn't see the irony in her own statement:lol:

Atleast it's not as bad as when the BBC banned white people from applying for a job :rolleyes:
 
oddjobbob51 said:
Surly she would have to ban all female writing teams as otherwise it is sexist against men.
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You'd think so under her stupid guidelines.

You could have an excellent duo working together, like Gervais and Merchant, or Clement and Frenais then this woman would reject what they have purely because there's no female writer.

No interest in quality programming
 
What A Waster said:
You'd think so under her stupid guidelines.

You could have an excellent duo working together, like Gervais and Merchant, or Clement and Frenais then this woman would reject what they have purely because there's no female writer.

No interest in quality programming
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Or one of the writers just names their wife on the credits just to get it through, even though they had no input.
 
Pseudonym Number 1 said:
How about she just commissions shows on merit rather than some stupid tick in the box reason.
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I agree, but she makes a half decent point that female writers struggle against men who have more writing credits.

The whole thing, same as a black person being interviewed for a managers job just feels a bit wrong though. It’s a bit patronising to the one person.
 
What A Waster said:
Can't imagine this having any impact at all.
ITV has always produced absolutely terrible comedy.
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Maybe because they've always employed all male writing teams.;)

Phoebe Waller-Bridge is arguably the best comedy writer around at the minute but I'm not sure of the definition of a writing 'team'. It would be foolish to insist on 50:50 on a comedy series if there was a writing duo but I can see the merit if you have a team of eight writing sketch shows.

I think we can all agree that ITV comedy is non-existent anyway.
 
If there are 5 scripts by men for every one script by females that suggests about 80% of comedy script writers are men to me.

Who knows how many scripts that hit her desk actually get filmed. I imagine a tiny proportion.

Aiming for 50:50 gender split could be a good thing though, it depends on the show. I imagine Derry Girls has more female writers, and the Inbetweeners more male based on the leading cast.
 
Bit of a generalisation tbf. I could pull a few examples together of women writers being funnier than some absolutely shite male ones.

But it's all about opinions.
 

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