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Where are the female topical comedy writers?

Where are the female topical comedy writers? 3

Where are the topical female comedy writers? This is an issue that’s been in the news over the past week, with both Private Eye and the producers of Mock The Week having come under criticism for not employing enough women.

This was the topic of discussion at the recent Writer’s Guild event ‘That’s (not) Enough Women’. The evening was chaired by Susan Calman, regular on Radio 4’s News Quiz and general topical-comedian-about-town, and featured other industry panellists who asked the question: why aren’t more women trying to become topical comedy writers?

Panellist Andrea Mann recently wrote an excellent article for the Huffington Post which attracted more attention to the issue and offered some possible answers:

“There's no doubt that the world of comedy writing is male-dominated, and the world of joke-writing (as opposed to longer-form scripts) is very male-dominated… And it certainly seems that this latter gag-telling, antler-locking, bantering world is one which men are naturally drawn to, and women are not.

"It's partly because straightforward joke-telling, as Lucy Greeves and Jimmy Carr point out in their book The Naked Jape, 'requires very little emotional investment... telling jokes can be a good way of substituting thinking for feeling.' And we all know that there's nothing more male than hiding how you're feeling.”

In television terms, MA in TV Journalism at City University Kerry Hopkins, who is currently filming a documentary on the lack of famous female comedians on television, says that a call for action is needed: “I think the business needs to set a strategy in place for discovering this talent. This could be regular scheduled castings, perhaps of females who've won awards or are runners up… It's about getting this talent into the industry, rather than filling quotas for the sake of it, and putting females on the scene who are not funny, which is detrimental for all.”

As a tangential point, The News Quiz is perhaps unique among topical panel shows in that it’s A) consistently funny, rarely featuring panellists haemorrhaging recycled material crow-barred into whatever news story is being discussed and B) Has an equal number of men and women both on mic and behind the scenes. Though not always topical, BBC Radio 4 in particular has a strong contingent of comedy featuring, devised or produced by women, being streets ahead of its television counterparts.

Ultimately, as Andrea Mann said in her article, it’s not just up to producers and casting agents, women have to put themselves forward: “We women shouldn't just hold our pretty little breaths waiting for it to happen. As Gandhi said: we should be the change we want to see in the world. And I'm pretty sure he was talking about comedy writing.”

Andrea Miller

Read Andrea Mann's full article in the Huffington Post HERE and catch the podcast HERE as recorded by the Writers' Guild of Great Britain.

Pictured top to bottom - Susan, Calman, Andrea Miller, Kerry Hopkins