Just a Cotton-Pickin' Minute Here

I liked the title of your last post, honey, BUT you were only half right in how you characterized me (and even Shirky, who goes further than I do). Specifically:

>>They claim women won't achieve the success we want without tooting our horn
Yes absolutely.

>>and cheating.
No. I didn't say or mean that.

>>We need to boast
Yes absolutely

>>and even lie about our capacities and accomplishments
I didn't say lie. Shirky did, but he means a yes to "can you handle this job?" when you're not sure. That's not really a lie in my view; more of a gamble, and a responsibility to scramble and make your bold statement true.

>>Bravado yields recognition, promotion and big bucks.
Absolutely. Do you disagree? Do you have a plan for changing this?

>>Isn't this what's known as selling one's soul?
No. It's confidence -- the same confidence women always say they want in the men they date. If you have two job applicants with equal qualifications, and one is confident they can handle it while the other isn't, which would you choose?

I don't like arrogance, self-promotion, and relentless drive to get ahead. But as Shirky says, these traits are very common among successful people. You may say that many people including you (and possibly more women than men) would rather not succeed than become that obnoxious. Fine. But then you can't complain that women don't make as much money, rise to the tops of organizations, etc.

Is that what you want?

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.