ITV head of comedy Saskia Schuster is working to correct the wide gender gap among her department’s scribes. BBC confirms the UK channel is banning comedy series penned by all-male writing teams in order to address the “significant lack of shows written by women or with women on the writing teams.” Schuster is also starting a program to boost the number of women comedy writers, Comedy 50:50.
Last year it dawned on Schuster that “an awful lot of my comedy entertainment shows are made up of all-male writing teams.” She noticed that for every woman-penned script that landed on her desk, there were five written by men.
“The first thing I did was I changed my terms of commissioning,” Schuster revealed. “I won’t commission anything with an all-male writing team.” From now on, for a series to be commissioned or recommissioned, it “must aim towards 50:50 gender representation.”
She is also hiring women writers to series that have previously featured only male scribes. Brona C. Titley (“Tracey Ullman’s Show”) is joining game show “Celebability,” which was written exclusively by men in its first two seasons. Emerging female writers will shadow on others series, such as scripted comedy “Plebs.”
In order to combat the stubborn myth that there aren’t enough women working in the industry, Comedy 50:50 has created a database of female writers. The initiative also organizes events, including confidence workshops, and lists opportunities for women comedy writers on its website. Schuster hosts events where ITV producers participate in 10-minute conversations with three women writers.
“It is difficult to compete for jobs with men who have more writing credits,” Schuster explained about ITV’s new comedy policy and the launch of Comedy 50:50. “They can’t find producers who ‘get’ their voice and can develop their script to its full potential. They don’t thrive as the lone female voice in a writers’ room.”
Titley emphasized that inclusion — of women and other marginalized groups — can keep comedy exciting. “If you have the same type of writers in terms of race or sexual orientation or gender, then you’re only getting one kind of joke, and if you’ve got different voices in the room, you’re getting different kinds of jokes,” she said. “You want to represent the wide audience that’s watching. You want diversity in voice, or else it won’t be as funny because it won’t be appealing to as many people.”
