Originally a comment by iknklast on Blatant and rampant discrimination against women directors.

Same thing on stage. Women directors, women playwrights, women actors. Studies have shown that scripts with women’s names are less likely to get read – by a large margin.

Women who write plays are told that the reason they get less attention is that they write plays about women and no one wants to see them. But the majority of theatre ticket buyers are…women. And plays by women often do better at the box office, sell more tickets…and run for a much shorter time. So it isn’t economics driving it.

Meanwhile, men who write plays about women (and there are many) are able to get those produced, even if they are written in a way that isn’t stereotyped or sexist or pointedly anti-feminist. They can be very much like the types of plays women write about women, and still get produced, because…well, mansplaining, I guess.

And if women only write plays about women, then wouldn’t that mean men only write plays about men? No, they write plays about events…about things…about issues…about whatever. Women don’t write about anything important. Lucy Prebble didn’t really write anything important when writing the play Enron, right? Caryl Churchill writes about very serious issues, such as the revolution in Rumania. But about the only time I see plays by women are the one play a year that a local college devotes to women writers, and that “yearly” event frequently skips two or three years.