Guess David Letterman is feeling the pressure cause he FINALLY hired a woman writer on his staff.
Her name is Jill Goodwin and she has been on the staff since 2001, started first as an assistant to the executive producers and most recently as a writer’s assistant to the staff.
Here’s what a spokesman said to the NY Times about the promotion:
For some time, Ms. Goodwin has been considered to be next in line for a writing job at “Late Show” as soon as there was an opening.
I want to know exactly what some time is and I want to know if there has not been a single male hired in the time she was “next in line.” I’m gonna bet that some guys were hired. If I am wrong I will apologize.
I just think the Ms. Goodwin should be giving my friend Nell Scovell a phone call of thanks cause had she not put herself out there and talked about the Letterman work environment I bet this news would still not have happened.
Additionally, Neely Swanson who did development for David E. Kelley and is now an adjunct professor at USC also counted the pilots for next season. Here’s what she found:
Of the 66 pilots I documented, 13 pilots had at least one female writer as part of the “created by” team; however, of those 66 pilots, only 7 of them were written entirely by women. You can do the math yourself, but this works out to a high of 20% involvement by women when writing alone and/or with men; and just 11% when written by women without male participation. A closer look at the all the names will reveal one writer of Hispanic origin, three Asian-Americans and an entire absence of African American writers.
As she says this:
This isn’t a glass ceiling, it’s a White Boys’ Club brick wall.
So all of you who think things are hunky dory out in la la land, really need to get a sense of the reality.
Letterman Show Adds a Female Staff Writer (NY Times)
Women Can’t Create and White Men Can’t Jump (Research Wrap Blog)
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