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Sexism Watch: The Jay Leno Show- Where are the Women Writers?

posted by Women & Hollywood
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 12:12pm EDT

Jay Leno does a lot of good things with his piles of money. He funds very important work being done to support women and girls in Afghanistan through the Feminist Majority, but as Nancy Franklin pointed out in a recent New Yorker story on his new show, Leno does not employ a single female on his writing staff.

It’s not that he’s alone with this problem. Here are the writing nominees from this year’s Emmy Awards:

The nominees were:

The Stephen Colbert Show (2 women out of 14 writers- but he does have a female executive producer- who had now resigned)

The Daily Show (1 woman out of 16)

Late Night with Conan O’Brien (NO women out of 16)

Late Show with David Letterman (NO women out of 14)

SNL (5 women out of 22)

So pathetic. And don’t get me started on David Letterman (there will be a post on this)

But Jay does good work for women. He should know better. You gotta walk the walk and talk the talk. It’s great to fund women in Afghanistan, but hire a goddamn female comedy writer. It can’t be that hard. I have been told that he had a couple of women writers in late night who were fired before he moved to prime time. Now he has 19 male writers and no women.

Here’s the money quote from the Franklin piece:

In other diversity news, Leno’s and the rest of the nighttime comedy shows are bizarrely lacking in women writers. Did a bomb go off and kill all the women comedy writers and leave the men standing? The other night on the Emmy Awards broadcast, the names of the nominees for best writing on a comedy or variety series were read, and, out of eighty-one people, only seven were women. Leno has no women writers on his show. Neither does David Letterman, and neither does Conan O’Brien. Come on.

I agree with Franklin – Come on!

Leno at the Bat (New Yorker)