A study by the Writers Guild of America, West, has revealed a discouraging rate of progress in the number of women writers employed film and TV over the past seven years. Although the percentage of women writers is up, the total number of women writers is down.
The report, entitled “Catching Up With a Changing America?,” shows that women made up about 27 percent of the 3,015 writers employed in television during 2004; in film, of 1,770 writers employed, 18 percent are women. In 1998, the Writers Guild’s survey showed 26 percent women writing for film and 17 percent women writing for television. Darnell Hunt, a UCLA sociology professor and the report’s author, told the Los Angeles Times, “You still have an industry that is dominated by white male writers.”
The guild’s report also showed that the wage gap between female and white male writers is now $19,000 in the film industry and $12,000 in the TV industry.
