Gender bias in theater? Yes, but it's complicated

3 rigorous new studies looked at whether there is gender bias in theater, i.e. whether plays by women get produced less often, or are not allowed to play as long (regardless of profitably.)

The results are striking and unexpected. Theatrical artistic directors defend the fact that most produced plays are written by men, by saying that men simply write more plays. The study actually confirmed this; there are twice as many male playwrights, and they're more prolific to boot.

BUT -- when the same play was sent out, half the time under a man's name and half under a woman's, the "woman's" play was rated significantly worse overall. Here's the twist: male artistic directors and literary managers rated them exactly the same, but female ADs and LMs downgraded "Mary's" play.

The third study looked at the 329 new plays over the last decade on Broadway, where we can roughly assume that money is the main criteria. Plays by men outnumber those by women 8 to 1. The plays written by women that were produced made 15-20% more money than men's plays -- but they weren't allowed to run any longer.

Conclusion -- there's money to be made by producing more female-written plays on Broadway. And this stuff is complicated.