Gender bias in theatre.
Mon, 29 June 2009, 09:43 amgrantwatson30 posts in thread
Gender bias in theatre.
Mon, 29 June 2009, 09:43 amThere is a great article here about gender bias in American theatre, where the majority of plays staged are by male authors. I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts about the findings presented in the article.
Do you think there's a problem of gender bias here in Australia? What can we do? What should we do?
That's bloody weird - I'm
Mon, 29 June 2009, 10:18 amThat's bloody weird - I'm not registered at the NY Times and the link works fine for me. How strange.
The bit in the article that surprised me the most:
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.
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.”
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