Female Creators in Science Fiction and Fantasy Television: The Stats

Posted: May 22, 2013 | Author: Suzanne | Filed under: Activism, Culture, Fantasy, Feminism, Rants, Science Fiction, Social Justice | Tags: Beauty and the Beast, Doctor Who, Drop Dead Divas, Elementary, Fringe, Game of Thrones, GIF, Grimm, Once Upon a Time, Person of Interest, Revolution, Showrunners, Stephen Moffat, Teen Wolf, Television, True Blood, Vampire Diaries, Walking Dead, Women in Television | 10 Comments

OH HAI EVERYONE. I’m back! After writing my senior thesis and then *dying* for a few weeks. I SHOULD BE BACK MORE REGULARLY. I will tell you all about my journey with Tiptree, Russ and Butler soon. Maybe. Feminist Science Fiction, yay!

(can you tell I’m still exhausted from the end of the semester?)

Anyways. Back to your regularly scheduled yelling and rants and statistics!

***

[Content Note: GIFs, misogyny, racism]

Whenever I explain about why I prefer television to movies, I throw one random line in: “Television is more friendly to women.”

Don’t ask me where I first got that idea. It’s one of those unexamined assumptions floating around my brain. But I’m not the only one who thinks this way. It seems like a broadly accepted truth that television is some kind of haven for women. Movies are aimed towards men. Videogames are aimed towards men. But more women watch television. Waaaay more women watch television. Network prime time television has 65-70% female viewership. Some stations, like the CW, go up to 70-75%.

With those kinds of numbers, television as a medium must be female friendly, right? It must have lots of female creators and female characters and female-friendly stories, right?

See, this is why I should always examine my unexamined assumptions.

Because: Nope.

Sure, women watch more TV. But according to the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, only 38.9% of characters in prime-time programs are women (compared to a 60%-65% female viewership). Only 22% of prime time shows feature girls and women in roughly half of all speaking parts. And 20% of shows cast men or boys in 75% or more of speaking roles.

TV! The Land of Women Mostly Men!

(also, I swear to claude, if anyone responds “but there are more men on TV because women WANT to see more men because all women are attracted to men and only want to see men men men men and they hate women” I will throw things. LOTS OF THINGS)

So that’s what’s happening on-screen. But what about off-screen? Who is creating these shows? Who produces them, directs them, writes them?

Every year when the Oscars come around, feminists (including me) complain about how few female writers and directors are recognized by the academy. Movie directing and writing is still very much a boys-club.Given the high female viewership, would it be different for TV? Do female creators thrive in television?

(probably not, tho)

Two months ago – right before the hell of writing my honors thesis hit – I decided to find out. Given my interest in SF/F – and the time necessary to gather the stats (the numbers for one TV show takes about 15 minutes, which sounds fine… until you realize there are hundreds of prime-time shows) – I decided to concentrate on female creators in SF/F television. Plus, in SF/F fandom, we often talk about the number – and visibility – of female creators in books, in comics and in movies. The television stats, I thought, would make an interesting addition to the discussion, especially given how many big, influential SF/F shows there are on TV today.

The following statistics are very ad-hoc. Very ad-hoc. Which isn’t to say that they aren’t interesting, or that they don’t speak to the general state of female creators in SF/F television. But they were done by one overwhelmed blogger with a weird  methodology. They are not supposed to be the be-all, end-all of a discussion.

Thus: I made a list of as many SF/F shows that appeared in North America in 2012 and 2013 and that I could think of/find on the internet. I was pretty loose about the definition of SF/F, which is why you’ll see shows like Elementary and Drop Dead Diva (she is a GHOST) on the list. I only looked at one season of each show: for those shows that had more than one season, I chose whichever season was most current. So for Supernatural, I looked at Season 8 (the 2012-2013 season) as opposed to Season 7 (the 2011-2012 season), while for Eureka, I looked at the 2012 season (because that was the show’s last season).

The twenty six shows I covered are: Lost Girl, Eureka, Beauty and the Beast, Being Human (US), Alcatraz, Arrow, Touch, Fringe, The Neighbors, Last Resort, Revolution, Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Once Upon A Time, Person of Interest, Drop Dead Diva, The Walking Dead, Alphas, Warehouse 13, Supernatural, Game of Thrones, Elementary, Grimm, Falling Skies, Teen Wolf and Doctor Who.

I only took stats on episodes that had already aired, which would have been a great idea if I hadn’t let two months go by between gathering the stats and writing up this post. This is why, for example, I looked at Game of Thrones season 2, instead of Game of Thrones season 3 – season 3 hadn’t started when I gathered the stats. Like I said: this stats gathering is wonky. WONKY. I thought about redoing the stats for shows that aired more episodes, but it took me twelve hours of work to gather stats the first time and I’m lazy. So, fair warning.

(Fun experiment: if you were really dedicated, you could use these stats to figure out the exact date when All The Shit Hit The Fan and I had to abandon my blog for three months)

Once I had the 26 shows, I calculated the gender breakdown for

1. The Executive Producers (colloquially known as the showrunners)
2. The episode directors
3. The episode writers
4. How many episodes were written by men v. women. As I quickly realized, sometimes a show can have a fair number of female writers… while most of the episodes are still written by men.

The results were… interesting. And by interesting, I mean “depressing.”

In 77% percent of SF/F shows, less than half the writers were female. 77%. Twenty out of twenty six.

Twenty three percent of shows – 6 shows –  had 50% or more female writers. Out of those 6 shows, only three had a majority of female writers (three shows were exactly gender-balanced). So basically, 77% of shows are majority-male written, 11.5% are majority-female written, and 11.5% are perfectly gender-balanced.

On average, 68.2% of writers for SF/F shows were men, while 31.5% of them were women.

I want to go deeper in those numbers, because there might be an instinct to go “well, there are some shows where men dominate, and some shows where women dominate, and it all evens out.” Which: no.There are 77% of shows where men dominate, and 11.5% of shows where women dominate, so it’s clearly NOT evening out. But even in those shows where women “dominate,” they don’t dominate in the same ways men do. Numbers, please!

The highest percentage of female writers on a show is 57%. The highest percentage of male writers is 100% (in fact, there are two shows – Doctor Who and Teen Wolf – where all the writers are male). The lowest percentage of male writers is 43%. The lowest percentage of female writers is 0%. In other words, while there are shows with no female writers, there are no shows that do not have male writers. There is always male representation, and the lowest male representation is 43%… for two out of twenty six shows.

In 31% of SF/F shows, less than one fourth of the writers were female. Most shows – 46% – employ between 25% and 49% percent female writers. 11.5% employ exactly the same number of men and women, and 11.5% employ a higher number of  women (between 51-57%).

Do women thrive as SF/F television writers? I don’t know about you, but I would not call that “thriving.”

If you think the numbers for female writers are depressing, you might want to take a second before we move on to the statistics for female directors. Trust me, we haven’t even gotten to the best worst part.

Out of twenty six shows, absolutely NONE had 50% or more female directors. Zero. Zip. Nada.

Ten of the twenty six shows – Thirty eight percent –  had ZERO female directors. A whooping 96% of the shows  had 75% or more male directors.

Let me rephrase that: in twenty five out of twenty six SF/F shows, less than one fourth of the directors were female. Only one show had more than 25% female directors.

On average, 89.9% of directors for SF/F shows were men, while 10.9% of them were women. Men aren’t just a majority of directors. They’re an overwhelming majority. Women barely have any presence at all.

So that’s the cursory overview state of women in the marvelously female-friendly land of television.

Unexamined assumptions, huh? Really worth examining.

Here’s the complete breakdown for writers, directors and executive producers for all twenty six shows. I put them in order of highest-to-lowest percentage of female writers (which yields results both obvious – Game of Thrones is #21 – and surprising: Elementary is #22).

1. Lost Girl (Season 3) 

Episodes: 7
Executive Producers: 3 (2 men, 1 woman) 33% women, 67% men 
Director: 6 (5 men, 1 woman) 16% women, 84% men 
Writers: 7 (3 men, 4 women) 57% women, 43% men
-episodes written only by women: 4 (57%)
-episodes written only by men: 3 (43%)

2. Eureka (season 5) 

Episodes: 13
Executive producers: 2 (1 woman, 2 men) 33% women, 67% men 
Directors: 8 (3 women, 5 men) 37.5% women, 62.5% men 
Writers: 14 (8 women, 6 men) 57% women, 43% men 
– Episodes written only by men: 3 (23%) 
– Episodes written only by women: 4 (30%) 
– Episodes written by both: 6 (46%) 

3. Beauty and the Beast (Season 1) 

Episodes: 14
Executive producers: 11 (3 men, 8 women) 27% women, 73% men
Director: 12 (11 men, 1 woman) 8% women, 92% men 
Writer: 11 (6 women, 5 man) 54% women, 46% men 
– written only by men: 4 (28.5%) 
– written only by women: 6 (43%)
– written by both: 4 (28.5%) 

4.  Being Human (season 3) 

Episodes: 7
Executive producers: 2 (1 man, 1 woman) 50% men, 50% women
Directors: 4 (3 men, 1 woman) 75% men, 25% women 
Writers: 8 (4 men, 4 women) 50% men, 50% women 
– Episodes written only by men: 3 (43%) 
– Episodes written only by women: 3 (43%) 
– Episodes written by both: 1 (14%) 

5.  Alcatraz (season 1) 

Episodes: 13
Executive Producers: 5 (4 men, 1 woman) 20% women, 80% men 
Directors: 8 – all men (100% men) 
Writers: 10 (5 men, 5 women) (50% women, 50% men) 
– Episodes written only by men: 4 (31%)
– Episodes written only by women: 4 (31%) 
– Episodes written by both: 5 (38%) 

6.  Arrow (Season 1) 

Episodes: 16
Executive Producers: 4 (all men) 100% 
Directors: 13 (12 men, 1 woman) 8% women, 92% men 
Writer: 10 (5 men, 5 women) 50% men, 50% women 
– Episodes written only by men: 7 (44%) 
– Episodes written only by women: 3 (19%) 
– Episodes written by both: 6 (37%)  

7. Touch (season 2) 

Episodes: 5
Executive producers: 7 (3 women, 4 men) 43% women, 57% men 
Directors: 4 (all men) 100% men 
Writers: 5 (2 women, 3 men) 40% women, 60% men
– episodes written only by men: 3 (60%) 
– episodes written only by women: 2 (40%) 
– episode written by both: 0

8. Fringe (Season 5) 

Episodes : 13
Executive producers: 1 man (100% male)
Directors: 12, all men (100% male) 
Writers: 5 (3 men, 2 women) 40% women, 60% men 
– 9 episodes written by only men (69%) 
– 4 episodes written by only women (31%) 
– 0 written by both

9. The Neighbors (season 1) 

Episode: 18
Executive producers: 4 (all men) 100% men 
Directors: 7 (all men) 100% men 
Writers: 10 (4 women, 6 men) 40% women, 60% men 
– Episodes written only by men: 9 (50%) 
– Episodes written only by women: 4 (22%) 
– Episodes written by both: 5 (27%) 

10. Last Resort (season 3) 

Episode: 13
Executive Producers: 4, all men 100% men 
Directors: 10 (8 men, 2 women) (20% women, 80% men) 
Writers: 11 (3 women, 8 men) (37.5% women, 62.5% men )
– Episodes written only by men: 9 (70%) 
– Episodes written only by women: 4 (30%) 
– Episodes written by both: 0 (0%) 

11.  Revolution (season 1) 

Episodes: 10
Executive Producers: 3 (all men) 100% men 
Directors: 8 (all men) 100% men 
Writers: 8 (3 women, 5 men) 37.5% women, 62.5% men 
– Episodes written only by men: 6  (60%) 
– Episodes written only by women: 2 (20%) 
– Episodes written by both: 2 (20%) 

12. Vampire Diaries (season four) 

Episodes: 15
Executive Producers: 4 (2 men, 2 women ) – 50% men, 50% women 
Directors: 12 (11 men, 1 woman) – 91% men, 9% women 
Writers: 11 (4 women, 7 men) – 36% women, 64% men 
– 6 episodes written only by men (40%) 
– 5 episodes written only by women (34%) 
– 4 episodes written by both (26%) 

13. True Blood (Season 5) 

Episodes: 12
Executive producer: 2 (both men) 100% men 
Directors: 9 (8 men, 1 woman) 11% women, 89% women 
Writers: 6 (2 women, 4 men) 33% women, 67% men 
– Episodes written only by men: 8 (67%) 
– Episodes written only by women: 4 (37%) 
– Both: 0 (0%) 

 14. Once Upon a Time (Season 2) 

Episodes: 15
Executive Producers: 2 (both men) 100% men 
Directors: 10 (9 men, 1 woman) 90% men, 10% women 
Writers: 10 (3 women, 7 men) 70% men, 30% women 
-10 episodes written by only men (67%)
– 4 episode written by only women (27%) 
– 1 episode written by both (6%) 

15. Person of Interest (season 2)

Episodes: 16
Executive Producers: 5, all men (100% male) 
Directors: 11 (10 men, 1 woman) 9% women, 91% men 
Writers: 13 (4 women, 9 men) 30% women, 70% men 
– 9 episodes written only by men (60%)
– 3 episodes written only by women (15%)
– 3 episodes written by both (15%)  

16. Drop Dead Diva (Season 4) 

Episodes: 13
Executive Producers: 5 (all men) 100% men 
Directors: 9 (8 men, 1 woman) 11% women, 89% men 
Writers: 11 (3 women, 8 men) 27% women, 73% men 
– Episodes written only by men: 9 (69%) 
– Episodes written only by women: 1 (8%) 
– Episodes written by both: 3 (27%) 

17. The Walking Dead (Season 3) 

Episodes: 12
Executive producers: 2 (both men) 100%
Directors: 9 (2 women, 7 men) 22% women, 78% men 
Writers: 8 (2 women, 6 men) 25% women, 75% men 
– Episodes written only by men: 8 (67%) 
– Episodes written only by women: 4 (33%) 
– Episodes written by both: 0 (0%) 

18. Alphas (season 2) 

Episodes: 13
Executive Producers: 6 (all men) 100% men 
Directors: 8 (6 men, 2 women) 25% women, 75% men 
Writers: 11 (8 men, 3 women) 27% women, 73% men 
– Episodes written only by men: 9 (69%) 
– Episodes written only by women: 1 (8%) 
– Episodes written by both: 3 (27%)

19. Warehouse 13 (season 4) 

Episodes: 10
Executive Producers; 3 (all men) 100% men 
Directors: 6 (all men) 100% men 
Writers: 9 (2 women, 7 men) (22% women, 78% men) 
– Episodes written only by men: 6 (60%) 
– Episodes written only by women: 4 (40%) 
– Episodes written by both: 0

20. Supernatural (season 8) 

Episodes: 16
Executive Producers: 1 (male)
Directors: 14 (14 men)  100% men 
Writers: 9 (7 men, 2 women) – 22% women, 78% men 
– 12 episodes written only by men (81%) 
– 1 episode written only by women (6%) 
– 3 episodes written by both (13%) 

21. Game of Thrones (season 2) 

Episodes: 10
Executive producers: 2 (both men) 100% men 
Directors: 5 (all men) 100% men
Writers: 5 (4 men, 1 woman) 20% women, 80% men 
– episodes written by only men: 8 (80%) 
– episodes written by only women: 2 (20%) 
– episodes written by both: 0

22. Elementary (Season 1) 

Episodes: 17
Executive producers: 4 (3 male, 1 female) – 25% women, 75% men  
Directors: 14 (11 male, 3 female) – 20% women, 80% men 
Writers: 12 (2 women, 10 men) – 16% women, 84% men 
– 13 episodes written only by men: 76% 
– 2 episodes written only by women: 12% 
– 2 episodes written by both: 12% 

23. Grimm (season 2) 

Episodes: 12
Executive Producers: 5 (all men) 100% 
Directors: 12 (2  women, 10 men) 17% women, 83% men 
Writers: 10 (1 woman, 9 men) 10% women, 90% men 
– Episodes written only by men: 9  (90%) 
– Episodes written only by women: 1 (10%) 
– Episodes written by both: 0

24. Falling Skies (season 2) 

Episodes: 10
Executive Producer: 1 (male) 100% men 
Directors: 7 (6 men, 1 woman) 14% women, 86% men 
Writers :7 (6 men, 1 woman) 14% women, 86% men 
– episodes written only by men: 8 (80%) 
– episodes written only by women: 2 (20%) 

25. Teen Wolf (Season 2) 

Episodes: 12
Executive Producers: 6 (5 men, 1 woman) 16% women, 84% men 
Directors: 2 (all men) 100% men 
Writers: 6 (all men) 100% men 

26. Doctor Who (series 7) 

Episodes: 6
Executive Producers: 1 (man) 100% men 
Directors: 4 (all men) 100% men 
Writers: 3 (all men) 100% men 

(note: the executive producer stats are BY FAR the most fuzzy. With some shows, it’s really hard to tell WHO the showrunner is. So take those stats with a MASSIVE grain of salt, and correct me if I’m wrong)

****

A few weeks after I took these statistics, articles began to pop up about Steven Moffat, Doctor Who’s showrunner. Apparently, people figured out that he hadn’t had a  female writer on the show during his entire tenure as showrunner.

I will not lie! My initial reaction was: “Damn, they got the drop on me. This is why you publish blog posts EARLY, girl.”

Anyways – people were understandably mad at Stephen Moffat.  Doctor Who is a very popular Sci-Fi show – more importantly, it’s a show that is very popular with women. Steven Moffat has had thirty two episodes to work with. You’re telling me he can’t find one female writer he wants on the show? Over thirty two episodes? Not a single one?

Yeah, it’s pretty terrible.

It’s also worth noting that Steven Moffat has had zero female directors and zero female writers on the other show he runs, Sherlock. And he hasn’t had a female director on Doctor Who in two series (twenty four episodes). So it’s a pretty obvious pattern.

But here’s the thing. Steven Moffat is not a glaring exception from the norm. Steven Moffat is the norm. A slightly more extreme version, yes. But only slightly.

And listen, I do not like Steven Moffat. At all. My boyfriend and I recently watched all of Doctor Who, and it’s pretty striking how quickly our attitude went from “yay, another Doctor Who episode to watch!” to “… I guess we should watch the next episode of Doctor Who, huh? Blurrrgh” when Moffat took over as showrunner.

(Aside from anything else, he’s not a good writer. Example: WHY THE FUCK DID THE TARDIS BLOW UP? Are we ever going to find out? WHY DID THE SILENCE NEED RIVER SONG IN THE FIRST PLACE, if the spacesuit was CONTROLLING THE PERSON INSIDE IT?) Plus Steven Moffat is terrible to female characters. Like, painfully terrible. I have so many rants stored up about his treatment of Amy Pond, River Song and Clara Oswin.

… sorry, that rant was supposed to be shorter. Point being: I do not like Steven Moffat. I do not want to defend Steven Moffat.  But he is not alone in his show’s lack of female creators. So if we’re going to call him out for his lack of female writers, we  should also call out all the other shows with few – or zero – female writers and directors.

And that’s basically all of them.

Put it this way: I’m worried we’re turning Steven Moffat into the bogeyman. He’s terrible to female characters! He’s terrible to female creators! He says the most despicable shit in interviews (as a bisexual woman, I particularly enjoyed his comment that he doesn’t put bisexuals on his shows because “[bisexuals] are too busy having fun” to care about representation. Thanks. No, seriously). So we (correctly) get outraged and yell at him a lot, and call him out etc.

But meanwhile, we don’t even notice that, say, Elementary’s writers are 80% male, and its directors are 84% male. Elementary  is a great show for female representation. It’s a great show for POC representation. It includes all kinds of feminist  concepts like boundaries, consent, good treatment of abuse victims, gaslighting etc. But behind the scenes? It’s only a tiny bit better than Doctor Who.

How about Once Upon A Time, a show where the hero, the villain and a whole lot of the main supporting characters are all female? Where there are a lot of kick-ass, interesting, complex women?  Where women are portrayed in a variety of ways (not just the Strong Female Character TM?) Ninety percent of their directors are men. Seventy percent of their writers are men.
(and it’s a show that tends to fail pretty hard on female characters of color).

So why does it matter? If a show is doing well in terms of female representation, why should we care if their writing staff and directorial pool is filled with men?

That argument – the “good representation in one area negates bad representation in another” argument – is, I submit to you, poppycock.

Having more women writing, producing and directing TV shows is good in and of itself. Not just because it might bring about better female representation – as we’ve seen, men are capable of writing good female characters, and of avoiding sexist narratives. Better female representation might be a side effect of more female writers, producers and directors, but it’s not the only reason to push for it.

Both Elementary and Once Upon A Time do a better job with female characters than Doctor Who. A way better job. Hell, I would go so far as to say that even Game of Thrones does a better job with female characters (when it’s not busy adding more sexism to the source material). But it’s not just how you write the female characters in your show. It’s not just how you incorporate feminist concepts into your script. It’s also who you think is good enough to CREATE that show. To  create those worlds. To tell those stories.

For most SF/F shows, the people they think are good enough to create those shows and tell those stories are – men. Sure, there are a few women thrown in there. But mostly, it’s men.

And not having good representation of female creators isn’t just an implicit commentary on who you think is good enough to create a show. It also has economic consequences.

Having more female creators on TV shows is important because it means women are getting paid. I don’t know how to spell it out more clearly: these are jobs. These are jobs for which people are getting paid. And women are not getting paid to do these jobs, because women are not getting these jobs. It’s part of the reason I thought the sexism on American Idol in the last two seasons was particularly terrible – by denying women a chance to compete in the higher ranks of Idol, you’re denying them a higher paycheck. And that matters. On a basic,  fundamental level, this is about money and jobs. Money and jobs that women cannot get, even on shows that are supposed to be catering to women (like the Vampire Diaries or True Blood). We need to support women economically just as much as we need to support women creatively.

And yes, representation offscreen is also important because it’s about supporting women creatively. As the stats show, women are not allowed to write, create, or direct their own stories. Even in shows that are ostensibly about women (Once Upon A Time, True Blood etc.) and that are ostensibly aimed towards a female audience, men are the ones creating, crafting and writing women’s stories. We don’t get control over our own narratives. Which is problematic because women are a marginalized group. The right to self-definition is one we rarely have – we are the other, not the self. The Self – men – get to define us. And part of breaking down oppression and marginalization is gaining the ability to define ourselves – to write ourselves, to tell our own stories.

(This is not an argument that no man should ever write about women. It’s an institutional problem, not an individual one, which we can change by getting *more* women into the industry.  Nor is it an argument that women are obligated to write about women – it’s important women be able to write about men, particularly since many people still think women are restricted to writing about their own experiences)

Moreover, most showrunners – the people who create those new shows, new mythologies, new characters, new stories – start off as TV directors or TV writers. If we want more showrunners to be women, we need to give them access to writing and directing jobs.

In other words, when we think about women in the television industry, we need to remember that both women’s representation onscreen and women’s representation offscreen matters. We shouldn’t write off bad representation behind the scenes just because a show has good female characters onscreen; a show can do well in one respect and fail in the other. And both sorts of representation (or lack of representation) have consequences.

For example, consider a girl who loves Doctor Who. She loves Amy Pond (one of the Doctor’s recent companions) so much that she decides to become a writer, just like Amy. And since she enjoys SF/F TV so much, she decides to become a television writer. Maybe she’ll even get a job on Doctor Who!

The problem is, given the current state of SF/F television (and Doctor Who) – she would probably have a really hard time getting work.

There are consequences to not promoting female creators offscreen.

***

These statistics, unfortunately, are fundamentally flawed. They only look at one axis of marginalization (sexism), and they do so with no real intersectionality. It is undoubtably the case that women of color have an even harder time getting jobs writing or directing SF/F TV shows. It’s almost certainly true that there are very few POC (men or women) writing or directing network television. That I didn’t look at these statistics means that my conclusions are inherently flawed – I can tell you that women are less likely to be hired, but I can’t tell you if certain kinds of women (white women, straight women, abled women) have an easier time, or if women are more likely to be hired than POC. Partially, these flaws come from the fact that it’s much easier to tell how many women v. men write a show – you can just count names (ah, the convenience of gendered names). I also tried to figure out number of POC writing for certain shows, and felt really gross, as a white woman, trying to guess who was a POC and who wasn’t from pictures (when I couldn’t find any self-identification).

But I do think the information I didn’t gather – information on race etc. –  is crucial to understanding who exactly is allowed to create SF/F television.

For example, in taking a second look at Elementary, I realized that even if Elementary doesn’t do a great job with female writers and directors, it does do a pretty good job in terms of Directors of Color. They had at least two WOC and three MOC directing episodes (out of twenty four episodes). Which isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot better than most shows. While that doesn’t negate Elementary’s lack of women, it does provide an extra dimension to consider (and gives me hope that they’re *trying*)

Here are some broad, if incomplete, statistics to add to my numbers. According to the Writers Guild of America West, 87.3% of television screenwriters are white (while only 63.7% of the US population is non-hispanic white/european American). And 55 shows in the 2011-2012 television year hired no writers of  color. Those shows include Game of Thrones and Once Upon A Time.

I mean, again: even shows that are good about representation onscreen can be terrible about representation behind the scenes (not that either Game of Thrones or Once Upon A Time is good about POC representation onscreen). And it’s important to document and publicize those aspects of representation.

****

On a final note, these statistics are important because they belie the idea that creators and narratives respond to the audience – as opposed to the patriarchy. One of the most common (misogynistic) arguments you’ll hear when you talk about lack of female creators in literature or in movies or in comic books is that the audience for those mediums is mostly male. Therefore, the creators are mostly male, because they’re best suited to respond to male desires. So it’s not misogyny! It’s just Reflecting the Audience.

This is a bullshit, victim-blaming argument to begin with, but it’s pretty much completely disproven if you look at the television statistics. Women watch way more television than men. Women watch way more network television than men. And yet women are still in the minority – often in the overwhelming minority – when it comes to creating television. It’s an important reminder that institutions don’t primarily respond to the makeup of their audience. They respond to the patriarchy. Comic books are often sexist not because they are aimed towards men, but because they are part of the patriarchy. The movie industry is often sexist not because its products are aimed towards men, but because it is responding to the patriarchy. The solution is not just for more women to watch shows/read comics etc. The solution is to dismantle institutional sexism.  

Is it easy? Nope.

Do I know how to do it (except by complaining online a lot and trying to raise awareness)? Nope

Is it worth doing? Absolutely.

Because this is just ridiculous.

(I miss Donna)

(also, as I mentioned, these statistics are super ad-hoc, so if you find errors, or if you want to add information, that would be very welcome! More info/getting a broader picture is always welcome)

(on the other hand, explaining why I am super-wrong and a bad statistics gatherer when I explain UPFRONT the problems with my methodology and *why* I didn’t have the capacity to do better is… not welcome. PRE-EMPTIVE WARNING)

---