Still Not Even: Gender of Playwrights

Gender of Playwright GraphHow does gender of playwright influence gender of characters in plays?

Women and men playwrights wrote with roughly a 55/45 split favoring their gender. In the Not Even Study, playwrights had written with a 60/40 split favoring their own gender, so this is a slight improvement. 

Both male and female playwrights seem to be moving towards writing more gender balanced scripts, but it is still clear that producing more female playwrights would lead to greater opportunities for female actors.


Women wrote roles for 588 women actors and men wrote roles for 1460 women actors. However, although men wrote more total roles for women, there are a few other factors at play.

  • Total number of plays with male writers is more than two times the total number of plays with female writers.
  • Plays by men have a larger average cast size than plays by women.

Average cast size for male playwrights is roughly nine actors and for female playwrights the average cast size is just under six actors. This can partly be explained by looking at the fact that male playwrights are better represented as writers of classic plays, which tend to have larger casts than contemporary plays.

The budget related data (see table 3) shows that men playwrights get over two thirds of the productions at the highest budget level.  This, plus the smaller cast size for women writers suggest that women playwrights are still working on a smaller scale and with fewer resources than their male counterparts.

Shows written by Women or All Woman Teams
199 playwrights●178 shows
35% Non-Union/Union Code 65% Union Contract
Women Men Trans
Directors 63%
122 artists
37%
72 artists
0%
0 artists
Union Actors 53%
243 artists
47%
217 artists
0%
0 artists
Non Union Actors 59%
345 artists
40%
234 artists
1%
7 artists

Table 8: Shows written by Women

Shows written by Men or All Men Teams
486 playwrights●366 shows
39% Non-Union/Union Code 61% Union Contract
Women Men Trans
Directors 38%
174 artists
62%
282 artists
0%
0 artists
Union Actors 39%
435 artists
61%
677 artists
0%
0 artists
Non Union Actors 47%
1025 artists
52%
1137 artists
<1%
11 artists

Table 9: Shows written by Men