Hullo,

Isn't TV great? It gets its own Feminist Friday today.

This is a detailed analysis of women directing episodes of television – as you might guess, the number of women directors are quite low, and the number of not white women directors even lower. What’s interesting to me is the below quotation – the stat “episodes of television directed by women” ignores the concentration around a very small number of women.

“Though it is documented that 12% of episodic television is directed by women, when credits are examined by the name this number does not seem to represent how many different women are directing.” “It appears […] as if only about the same 15 to 20 directors are hired again and again.”

http://www.buzzfeed.com/maryanngeorgantopoulos/women-mostly-shut-out-of-directing-televisions-most-popular#.ouqX19n5WR

Something I’ve noticed recently while watching opening credits is the huge number of casting directors who are women. I asked this question to a friend and subscriber (hi!) who found this podcast with some interesting conjecture in it, including the career path it requires and whether it's the sort of role that women are socialised into. The discussion of this, in an interview with two casting directors, starts seven minutes in:

http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/the-business/casting-tv-shows-hilary-swank-in-the-producers-chair

Have a restful Friday,

Alex.