silentpunk:

malarchi:

newsweek:

LATE NIGHT, BY THE NUMBERS:

The Tonight Show With Jay Leno
Male writers: 19
Female writers: 1

Conan
Male writers: 17
Female writers: 1

The Colbert Report
Male writers: 16
Female writers: 1

The Late Show With David Letterman
Male writers: 13
Female writers:

Ooh, I read an interesting little article on this subject. The diversity problem is actually much deeper than this due to the hiring pool, especially with writers for these kinds of shows. It’s hard to hire equally when 95% of your applicants are male. The writer of the article suggested it might be to do with how we bring up our children. In her household, her parents actively encouraged her brothers to be funny and outspoken at the dinner table, but when she did the same she was discouraged because it wasn’t “proper” or “ladylike”.

Something must be doNE

yeah the more female writers and comedians seen and credited on TV the more role models there are for young girls. The sexism has to be combatted at every stage of a woman’s life, there’s no doubt about that. There’s also no doubt that the common myth that is spread is that ‘women aren’t funny’ which is a self fulfilling prophecy because if you aren’t in a laughing mood or are prepared not to laugh (if you come to something cold) then you just aren’t gonna laugh. That’s why they have warm up acts at live shows. The whole world is a warm up act for male comedians because we are just more conditioned to find them funny.

I think you know what I mean, my point about tokenism, that you can have one token woman and that’s seen as equal even though women make up roughly 50% of the population.

Yeh totes, I think there are some pretty great female comedians in the lime light at the moment, and hopefully they and others will be featured more and more. But yeh, totally, hiring a single woman and being all “Eurgh, is that fine? Are you happy now?”

On a personal note, it’s really hard for me to see all these problems. I mean probably to do with being white male middle-class, but my background and the environment I was raised meant I didn’t have friends or family who were racist or overtly sexist and they’ve all, male and female, been smart and funny, so inside that bubble it’s hard to understand I think. But reading more and more of what you might call ‘feminist’ literature, you see the shocking disparity of the world. I mean reading this article…

http://thehathorlegacy.com/why-film-schools-teach-screenwriters-not-to-pass-the-bechdel-test/

…that’s completely terrifying to me. I could maybe understand if it was at some sub par learning facility but this is at UCLA! I just can’t believe that people are actively being taught to appease the mass status quo instead of actually doing something unique and interesting to them. The worst is that they have this bizarre notion of everyone else being in this ‘audience’ that they have to please, ignoring the fact that this audience is actually made up of individuals just like the people writing the stuff for them.

Oh! Actually the worst bit is where they apparently argue that people watched Terminator and Alien because of Arnie and special effects, not because Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley were incredible characters.

(Source: marieclaire.com)