Your Favourite TV Show Is Still Being Controlled By Old White Men
Homeland's writing staff is just 14.3% female, and other tales from the Hollywood workplace.
From the rather sad state of ‘No Shit, Sherlock’ comes this pretty damning report from the Writers Guild of America, which highlights the disparity in female, minority and over-40 representation in the writing rooms of Hollywood television. It seems that despite some substantial inroads to diversify the world’s biggest TV-creating culture in the past few years in order to better reflect the changing American population, the Hollywood workplace is still largely unbalanced.
Amongst its findings, the study concluded that despite an increase of 5% in the share of women being employed in TV writing rooms over the past decade (25% in ’99 to 30.5% last year) , it will take another 42 years before female representation is proportionate to men. The situation for minorities is even more dire: nearly a third of all TV shows created over the past year had no minority writers on staff at all. There was some good news for old people though: over-40s now claim a majority of TV staff positions (55.6%). Congratulations Generation X; you are now officially ‘The Man’ and using your new-found power to create things like Breaking Bad (85.7% over-40), American Horror Story (83.3% over-40) and, uh, The Middle (100% over-40). See, there were teenage dorks in the ’90s, too.
The most interesting part of the report has to be where the writing rooms of specific TV shows are broken down in minute detail. It seems that some of the most progressive writing rooms right now belong to shows like Two Broke Girls, which has seven women and five over-40s on its writing team of 14; Grey’s Anatomy, which has seven women and five minority members on its staff of 11; and Private Practice, whose staff of 10 is 50% female, 30% minority and 75% old-timers. In other words, Shonda Rimes is basically the Rosa Parks of TV stuff, breaking workplace barriers one medical drama at a time.
Good work, Grey’s Anatomy – you’re at the forefront of backroom diversity!
In the opposite of surprising news, Family Guy is a white boy’s club with only 14.3% of its staff of 21 writers being female and 19% from minorities; as is The Cleveland Show, whose staff of 24 is made up of just 16.7% female and 25% minorities; Homeland, whose staff of seven features just one women and zero minorities; and also It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, which has only two women and two minorities on its staff of 12 (and they probably secretly included ‘Italian’ as a minority group just so Danny DeVito could up their numbers).
Skim through the full report here to see if your favourite TV show’s backroom is awesomely diverse or a sad bastion of Whitey McWhite stuffs (try harder, Community).