Advocacy - Women Count

Background on the Women Count Call

         The Women Count Call for Equal Representation was developed by a group of theatre artists in response to a report on the status of women in theatre released in January 2002, the New York State Council on the Arts Theatre Program's Report on the Status of Women: A Limited Engagement? by Susan Jonas and Suzanne Bennett. 

       This report found that women were only 17% of the writers and only 16% of the directors in a survey of approximately 2,000 plays produced in U.S. non-profit theatres in 2001-02.  The Women Count Call asks all U.S. theatres to increase their employment of women playwrights and directors. 

• Read the NYSCA Report on the Status of Women>>
• Read the Women Count Call for Equal Representation>>

       Sign the call by filling in our online form or by downloading the print version and mailing it to us.  You can add your name to the list of supporters or submit the form anonymously.  When we have gathered enough supporters, we will issue a statement to the press, including the names of the supporters.

• Sign the Women Count Call for Equal Representation>>
• Download the Women Count Call>>

(Note:  This is a two-page Adobe Acrobat File .pdf file that includes a set of Frequently Asked Questions.)

• See the list of supporters so far>>

      The Women Count Steering Committee has prepared answers to Frequently Asked Questions about the Women Count Call.

• Read the Frequently Asked Questions>>
• Download the Frequently Asked Questions>>

(Note: This is a two-page Adobe Acrobat File .pdf file that includes the Women Count Call.)

Women Count Steering Committee:

Sarah Browning & Thea Douglas (co-chairs)
Mia Chung, Honour Kane, Maxine Kern, Todd London, Martha Richards, Dominic Taylor, Gwynn MacDonald, Liz Duffy Adams, Caridad Svitch, Olga Humphrey, and Robin Rothstein

The Women Count Call for Equal Representation

Issued by the Women Count Steering Committee - April 2003

Whereas:

• Women face enormous employment discrimination in the American theatre. A study by the New York State Council on the Arts showed that only 17% of the plays produced on the main stages of non-profit theatres nationwide in 2001-02 were written by women. Only 16% were directed by women.   Women of color wrote only 2.5% of plays produced, and directed fewer than 1%.

• Women make up more than half the theatre-going audience in the U.S., contributing more than half of the industry's revenue.

• Theatre is lagging behind other professions: Women comprise 30% of all lawyers and 24% of all physicians, and these percentages are increasing steadily because women are now 48% of law students and 44% of medical students.

In the Spirit of Equal Representation:

        We the undersigned - women theatre artists and their supporters - call upon all theatres in the United States to produce plays that reflect the diversity of our society, especially plays by women of all colors, and to hire more women directors, with the goal that an average of half the plays produced in any given season be written by women, half directed by women.

Sign the Women Count Call for Equal Representation!>>

See the list of supporters so far>>