This study, part of their initiative called Women Count, covers 355 productions from 22 theater companies. The thirteen employment categories included in this study range from playwrights, directors and stage managers to choreographers, sound designers and set designers.
4 comments:
I did not even know that there was a League of Professional Theatre Women, but I’m glad there is one. There are not enough women in the theater world and this article totally just proves my point. I am not surprised by these numbers at all though and I actually with that the League had don’t these surveys (or however they collected data) differently. First, more theater companies should be included because there are more theatre companies in this country then I could ever think possible and only using less the 2 dozen I don’t think is all too accurate. Also I would love to know WHERE in the United States are these companies and designers. It is also interesting to think about if it would be worth it to collect data from Europe? Their theatre scene is so different, it would be cool to find out how their numbers compare to that of the U.S. Second, there were only three fields listed here when there are A TON more out there in theater. I am mainly thinking about the more technical world. More articles need to talk about how few women there are NOT in the directing, writing, and management fields. This article only gives two percentages.
I could have told you before reading a word of this article that women are not well represented in theatre today. Who isn't talking about the shockingly low number of female playwrights on Broadway, or the disappointing number of female designers in many regional theatres? It is an unfortunate truth. What was shocking to me, however, was just how large a percentage of stage managers off broadway are women! I thought there would be more female SMs than female designers/playwrights/directors, but I could not have imagined that they would take up nearly 80% of the SM positions at some times. One thing I did find very interesting about the stage management statistics was that the ratio of women to men drops fairly dramatically (from 79% to 66%) when talking about production stage managers. It seems that while women are dominating the field on all levels, they are taking up more of the SM/ASM positions than PSM positions. Definitely something to think about. I would love to know what kind of connection there is between those numbers- do we trust the few male stage managers more with the greater responsibility of being a PSM? Or is that just the way the pieces have fallen?
These numbers aren’t very surprising, but this study is important nonetheless because it calls attention to gender disparity in theater production roles with numbers, which are irrefutable proof that some things need to change. It’s easy to tell that the way that women are taught to behave and interact in social/professional situations from an early age dictate the kinds of careers that they shoot for and are successful in. Directing, scenic design and playwriting are high profile production roles that dictate the performance and appearance of a show, and that’s why these “leading” roles are not very inclusive of women, who are rarely encouraged to step out as leaders the way men are. Similarly, the techie aspects of lighting and sound are the reason that women are often excluded from those trades which have historically been “a guy thing” because of the stereotypes associated with handling tools and taking charge of technical elements. It’s also no surprise that stage management is a largely female-dominated industry, since the desired skills and qualities of a stage manager are similar to those expected of women: accommodating, flexible, willing to compromise, attentive, understanding, etc...
I would say that women are definitely becoming more and more included in important production roles, and while the disparity is still there I think that the industry is advancing in the right direction in terms of gender equality, slowly but kinda surely.
I'm glad to see that there is attention being brought to the lack of women in theater, and most every industry for that matter. It is great that a thing like the League of Professional Theater Women exists, but I was a bit put off by the interview questions. LPTW's responses were very vague and indirect. Specifically, when asked what action is being taken to improve percentages, they mostly spoke about sharing the information and doing more studies. There was no definitive plan, or even a shadow of a plan for improvement. The responses seemed to lack passion and motivation, simply reiterating the information given to us in the survey without any sort of analysis or scrutiny. Hopefully the person being interviewed was just having a sleepy day or something of the sort, because it seems a company like LPTW has the potential to create great changes to benefit women in the professional world.
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