Abstract
Critics and creative workers have recently highlighted the lack of women working in British television comedy. Through thematic analysis of interviews with British television comedy professionals, this article explores how women talk about their work and their position within the industry. Outlining the specific industrial contexts within which female comedy professionals work, the article examines institutionalised gender norms and practical impediments which the interviewees' responses reveal, while also exploring the institutional and personal initiatives which they have developed to address these problems.
Highlights
Critics and creative workers have recently highlighted the lack of women working in British television comedy
Quantitative data does not exist for the number and proportion of women working in television comedy, the lack of women working in this field has been repeatedly highlighted by critics and creative workers
Most recent discourse has tended to focus on the paucity of women featuring on comedy panel shows – which culminated in BBC Director of Television Danny Cohen pledging to no longer have all-male line-ups (BBC 2014a) – and there has been concern about the lack of female comedy writers (Cosslett and Baxter 2014; Thorpe 2013)
Summary
Critics and creative workers have recently highlighted the lack of women working in British television comedy. It does so through in-depth thematic analysis of interviews undertaken with women working in a range of television comedy roles – writers, producers, editors and commissioners – and in various production contexts.
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