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| Study finds rampant discrimination against women...but only by women |
| 2009-06-30 |
| When more than 160 playwrights and producers, most of them female, filed into a Midtown Manhattan theater Monday night, they expected to hear some concrete evidence that women who are authors have a tougher time getting their work staged than men. And they did. But they also heard that women who are artistic directors and literary managers are the ones to blame. The NYT gets this out in the second sentence so 90% of their viewers can click to the next article without having their beliefs challenged. That conclusion was just one surprising piece of a yearlong research project that both confirms and upends assumptions about bias in the playwriting business. “There is discrimination against female playwrights in the theater community,” said Emily Glassberg Sands, who conducted the research. Still, she said, that isn’t the whole story; there is also a shortage of good scripts by women. Oh, no...no. This can't be. How can this be? There must be more discrimination by men to explain this...somehow. To sort out the findings, it helps to look at the research. Ms. Sands conducted three separate studies. The first considered the playwrights themselves. Artistic directors of theater companies have maintained that no discrimination exists, rather that good scripts by women are in short supply. That claim elicited snorts and laughter from the audience when it was repeated Monday night, but Ms. Sands declared, “They’re right.” Merit is never the answer, this crowd knows that. Even if it's less meritorious, the correct answer is to let society suffer and let the victim class win. In reviewing information on 20,000 playwrights in the Dramatists Guild and Doollee.com, an online database of playwrights, she found that there were twice as many male playwrights as female ones, and that the men tended to be more prolific, turning out more plays. What’s more, Ms. Sands found, over all, the work of men and women is produced at the same rate. The artistic directors have a point: they do get many more scripts from men. For the second study, Ms. Sands sent identical scripts to artistic directors and literary managers around the country. The only difference was that half named a man as the writer (for example, Michael Walker), while half named a woman (i.e., Mary Walker). It turned out that Mary’s scripts received significantly worse ratings in terms of quality, economic prospects and audience response than Michael’s. The biggest surprise? “These results are driven exclusively by the responses of female artistic directors and literary managers,” Ms. Sands said. And then her head...didn't explode somehow. Amid the gasps from the audience, an incredulous voice called out, “Say that again?” Ms. Sands put it another way: “Men rate men and women playwrights exactly the same.” I found this gem in an article written before the results: "I personally don’t think playwriting is a gene on a Y chromosome," said Theresa Rebeck, a playwright whose work has been produced frequently on New York stages, including on Broadway. She added that there has been a reluctance to confront the issue: "Many of our male peers find the debate intolerable. Men in the community seem to think that everything is fine." Ms. Sands also found plays that feature women — which are more commonly written by women — are also less likely to be produced. Kathryn Walat, a playwright who attended, said, “Most startling was the reaction to women writing — and I think of my own work — about female protagonists and the unlikability of those characters.” Ms. Sands was reluctant to explain the responses in terms of discrimination, suggesting instead that artistic directors who are women perhaps possess a greater awareness of the barriers female playwrights face. Still, at the end of the evening, Ms. Sands, who seemed surprisingly comfortable on the stage for an aspiring economist, received the kind of reaction that many playwrights in the audience would wish for: prolonged applause. I wondered why she didn't just bury the research when she found the results, but the question answers itself here. |
| Posted by:gromky |
| #3 Having been in both positions; being an office manager with the office comprised mostly of women, and working in an office (also comprised mostly of women) managed by a woman, I can attest to the rampant discrimination, bitchiness, back stabbing and general nastiness done by women to women. |
| Posted by: WolfDog 2009-06-30 12:07 |
| #2 Not a surprise. Women just don't work well together in a team if there's a woman boss. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2009-06-30 07:33 |
| #1 Great article! I will read this all Day, just for they smiles. |
| Posted by: whatadeal 2009-06-30 03:32 |