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Excellent piece. Thank you. I wish I had an answer for those numbers, but I don't. I'll make a side observation though:

When Stieg Larsson wrote Lisbeth Salander, he wasn't writing about all women. He was writing about one specific woman. When Josh Whedon made Buffy, he was making a show about Buffy.

I think that there may be an impetus for women and minority writers to focus primarily on creating women-centric or minority-centric projects regardless of quality because they're so under-represented. Some of it is naturally born out of writing/creating what you know, see and experience obviously.

But some of it may just be a sense of responsibility that they have to write about this because no one else is -- which curtails creativity and leads to stagnation.

Maybe the focus for all writers (not just women) should be to create the best piece they can. That's how you get Kathryn Bigelow directing The Hurt Locker or Point Break.

All comment boards should bear the warning: Here There Be Monsters... The comments on that one are a horror show. I'm glad you escaped with your dignity intact, Angelina.

I disagree with all the fawning over this piece. You criticize Roseanne's style/grammar, but I think what you've written here is rather grammatically shoddy, and I'd go in and fix it (I HAVE THE POWER!) but I'm at work. So, suffice it to say:

Your anecdotal "sexism isn't a problem for me" has equal or less value to me than Roseanne's opposite experience. Sure, she might be exaggerating or have a martyr complex or something, but... who are you? Someone badly in need of an editor and some fucking humility.

Wow, I have resorted to lurking for about half a year now but this...this pulled me back out. This is one of the most intelligent insightful things I've ever read on Pajiba. It's powerful and full of poise. It makes me proud to be a Pajiba reader, a writer in my free time, and a man that wants to see real female equality. It's amazing how much our world can still be a freeing and impressive place when people are willing to stop finger pointing and just look for a real solution to real problems. Thank you for this excellent piece of writing.

Maybe not the nicest way to put it but I'm firmly on team kate here. I also don't appreciate the ridiculously simplistic, dime-store psychology explanation for why women are less successful in writing. It made me cringe.

I disagree almost entirely with your article but you seem to be a thoughtful, argumentative and funny chick so I appreciate hearing your take on things anyway.

In addition, kate the great has you pet cat and she's going to tie it up in a burlap sack and throw it into the closest natural body of water.

Whatever, I thought this article was awesome. Keep at it, sista'!

Plus, it's pretty hard taking someone as successful as Roseanne has been seriously when they complain about "the man". I mean, c'mon . . . she got her then hubby Tom Arnold his own tv show on network tv based solely on her power as the star of a hit show. Is that "the man" really keeping her down?

I have met some really wonderful people in this field and I have met some real assholes too. Many ethnicities and both genders. I know there are still practices of inequalities to be overcome, but there will always be adversities to face regardless of who and what you are. That's not prejudice, that's just the nature of the beast- and we ALL can expect get the shit end of that stick.

The world of this particular business is a mean a nasty one. Like nature, it really doesn't give a damn what color your skin is or whether or not you have dangley bits for it will eat you up just the same. I do take exception to who might suggest the idea that I have somehow received some sort of magic pass because I'm a white man either in school or work (which I haven't) or that a minority of any type deserves some sort of preferential treatment to level the playing field (which they don't). If people wish to be treated with equality and thought as the same, they need to have the same parameters and unless something is glaringly unjust, need to learn to adapt to everyday inconveniences that are universal in general, even though they rarely are seen as such. We all get all get shit on sometimes and there are no free passes. They don't exist among writers.

And the portion of this post suggesting that women are in fact the harshest critics of other women, in my experience does seem to have some merit. I do not know if they feel they are doing that individual a favor by demanding better, trying give do their gender's social evolution a boost in output quality control or are just out-and-out petty. But whatever the reason it is just as unfair as it might have been if it had been carried out by a man and I feel it's just as sexist and incumbering. The fact that the intentions behind it somehow differ is irrelevant for the results are the same. If true equality is to be achieved both men AND women need to adjust their collective beliefs on gender.

I find the woman in this industry who don't hesitate and sally forth into battle with the same confidence and swagger as anyone else are far more likely for success for two reasons; first, that they show confidence and therefore come off as knowing what they are doing and secondly, even when met with roadblocks they can much easier shrug off the setback and charge back into the fray. And by the way, men that are not assertive or confident in their position are just as likely to be steamrolled too. Bottom line is that if you can produce well and you make yourself noticed you can find a place in the proverbial sun.

Thank you for taking the time to write this, Angelina. Your perspective, insights, and experiences were very informative and well stated. I think it's an incredibly valuable contribution to this ongoing discussion and I hope people find it and appreciate it.

I liked the original Roseanne piece as a salvo against the industry that surely did treat her with considerable hostility and contempt, but you're right, it's hard to find the line between petty personal grievances and systemic gender based discrimination when the person writing the column sees them as one in the same. Roseanne's opinions need to be taken with a grain of salt. And I haven't read her unfiltered diatribes so maybe they do go completely off the rails.

That's the problem with these discussions, people get so deeply and personally invested in their point of view that everything becomes polarized and challenging a belief becomes an attack on one's self. You did a great job of probing and questioning these issues from several angles. I think it's definitely a thought provoking piece.

I work as an assistant in Hollywood and I can't thank you enough for writing this. I took issue with Rosseane's piece for the same reasons that you did. I honestly think that women are women's harshest critics but no one seems to want to admit that.

I read scripts and novels for my production company's development department almost everyday and I tend to skip the title page so that I don't know the author's gender prior to reading. Upon talking to fellow assistants I found that a lot of us tend to do this.. gender doesn't always come into play when scripts are chosen, but of course it does happen. Every script written by a woman that I've passed on I've rejected because it was an awful script. I do the same for the men.

I'd also like to point out that male television writers are some of my favorite people in this business. In fact, just yesterday one of them went out and got me cold medicine after he saw that I was sick but was too busy to go out. That Roseanne painted them with such a broad stroke upset me to no end, mainly because they've been some of the friendliest and most helpful people that I've met out here. Are some of them sexist assholes? Absolutely. But not all of them and I would say not even most of them.

Err, just to clarify, I'm not denying that sexism is rampant in Hollywood. It is. I'm also incredibly appreciative of what women like Roseanne had to go through to make things better for women now.

But I'm annoyed when people look at the situation and make generalizations about it. All the male writers are sexist jackasses while all women writers are rejected just because they're women. That's not the case at all.

"So what am I going to do about it? I’m open to suggestions."

Not really my place to tell you what to do in a business about which I know next to nothing, but since you asked, perhaps you could mentor -- either unofficially or officially, if your association has programs for such -- women who want to work in your business? It seems to me that experiences like yours, in which you deal with sexism but recognize that not all men are sexists and that not all sexism is deliberate or malicious, would be helpful in encouraging someone who is beginning her career.

Good luck with your show.

Apologies for the double post.

Having read Roseanne's article\rant and just a few of the reactions to it one thing I kept feeling got overlooked was the fact that despite Rosie's complaints that her ideas and input were commonly derided or steamrollered the show was good.

The end result was a brilliant piece of work, and part of that brilliance has to come from the fact that Roseanne herself was not allowed complete creative freedom with her baby.

Maybe we'll never get to see the show Roseanne really wanted to make, but we did get to see the show that came out of editorialising and modifyng Roseanne's work, and it was a bloody good show. At its best, a brilliant show. I'd say some of those decisions she despised so much were actually the right ones and there's no recognition that in Roseanne's perfect world we'd have had a very different final result and a lot would have been lost from TV history as a result.

I read and enjoyed the Roseanne piece. I didn't believe every word she wrote. I'm a grownup, so I understand that you NEVER take one person's word for how a story went down. EVER. That doesn't mean that everything she wrote was untrue, but certainly much of it was colored by her own prejudices, perceptions, insecurities, etc. I don't think it's that most people lie all the time about everything, it's just that people perceive situations differently, sometimes they only know part of the story, sometimes the situation is too emotional for them to be dispassionate about.

But I agree with whoever suggested that maybe Roseanne's remembrance of her work situation 20 years ago was more accurate than some people are willing to give her credit for. People (mostly younger people, I think; because, you see, I'm very very old) don't think things can change so dramatically in just 20 years, but they can. They can change a whole bunch. Societies, industries, individuals. I think it very likely that this Ken guy and Roseanne were both colossal assholes back in the day. Having worked for over 20 years now (the last 13 in advertising), I can tell you that's very often the case. You find yourself not wanting to take either side of a particular dispute because both people (or groups) are such assholes about it. And the people at or near the top are often the most assholiest of all, because they can be. They can scream at a coworker for 10 minutes and as long as what they do brings in money, nobody can do anything about it. Whereas us lowly wage slaves would get shitcanned in the blink of an eye, as anybody who screams at coworkers should be.

As for the male style of getting ahead vs. the female style of getting ahead, how about instead of implying that all the ways women do it are wrong we instead encourage men to be less "I'm awesome" about every fucking thing they do and give someone else a little credit? Man, I wish I had a quarter for everyone I've ever met who thought they were awesome when they (he or she) was, at best, barely competent. Studies have shown most people significantly overestimate their own competence and intelligence. My years in the work world have demonstrated the truth of this over and over again. Many people strut around as if they are the greatest fucking thing to happen to the world. How many (really: be honest now) actually come close to that? I'm not talking about popularity. Or wealth. I'm talking about actual excellence at some kind of useful skill or trade. Donald Trump is a perfect example of a talentless braggart good for nothing but converting oxygen to carbon dioxide and yapping about how great he is.

There is a middle ground between downplaying your talents and bragging. It's called being a mature adult. Just because most people don't choose that way doesn't mean it doesn't exist or has no value.

This article does nothing but reinforce the already set-in-stone mindset I have that I will be a famous actress. I'll be famous for:

-How unbelievably phenomenal I am as a person.
-How unbelievably phenomenal I am as an actress.
-How unbelievably phenomenal I look.

Thanks, Angelina! I hope we rub elbows some day.

I'm an engineer.
I'm in also in a male dominated field.
Do I see sexism? No. After a generation or two of seeing perfectly capable women being able to kick their male collegues asses, and women getting better grades than their male counterparts in universities, it's quite rare. And yet, I'm in a female minority.

Furthermore, there is something known as the scissor graph, which has the number of men and women in certain fields as a function of the years studied or job level. It may start out equally, but as the years (or job level) advances, it becomes disproportionate, with the percent of men increasing and the percent of women decreasing. Giving, in a sense, the shape of scissors.

And this is after affirmative action, after feminism, after Anita Hill.

Look, nobody wants to say it, but this is the way it is. Women, more than men, are looking for that career/life balance.
What does that mean? It means less women will be willing to work overtime and for jobs that demand extra hours put in, more women will be looking for part-time jobs rather than full-time, and some will just opt-out after coming to terms with the costs of child care, especially after baby number two comes along.

Maybe they go back to work after the kids are a bit older, but that's difficult. And their careers were put on hold in the meantime. They might not even be able to get back into their careers. And so, you get less representation.

Now before everyone jumps down my throat, yes, I know that not all women do this. I'm just saying that they are more likely to do this than men. Much more likely. And therefore, in more demanding professions, not just those that are in Hollywood, you are going to have a smaller representation of the female population than male. And you know what? I think that it's always going to be that way. We're never going to get 50/50 representation. We'll always be a large minority.

I appreciate the article and both agree and disagree. But it kills me when people don't recognize sexism. Of course women are underrepresented in many fields and yes, of course it is a product of sexism. You say it's more because men overestimate themselves and women underestimate themselves but... do you seriously not see that this is a product of sexist conditioning? Do you honestly not understand how that relates to sexism entrenched in society so deeply that children are raised to have these beliefs about themselves? How can people not get that? I am truly baffled.

That being said, I acknowledge the point Natalie is making.

Speaking to Natalie's point, though, is the assumption that women *must* figure out how to achieve this work/life balance in favor of family, and men have to freedom to balance however they see fit, although definitely more towards work (is this an over-broad generalization? Yes).

But how often do men get asked, when their wives are pregnant, when or if they're planning on continuing to work after the baby's born? And I'm not talking about family leave. It's assumed a women will make a choice between career and motherhood, and a man doesn't have to. I'm sure there are single dads and stay-at-home dads on here that can probably speak up to the way people respond to them, as if they're some sort of rare species, and to me, that's just wrong. It's a family question, not a gender question, and unless I'm breastfeeding, there's no reason I have to be the one at home instead of dad. And even with breastfeeding, accommodations can be made.

Also, Saucin', well f*ckin' said.

Thank you for this, Angelina. You've opened up a lot of insight for me.

I'm an aspiring feature film writer. I have more completed scripts (in more drafts) than anyone I know. I get great coverage from an unbiased, professional third party.

I have the work ethic, the practice and the education. But your article has shown me what I don't have: enough confidence in my work. I send my scripts to competitions, list them on InkTip, and send sometimes send them to friends in the industry.

It's not enough. I need to get myself a copy of the Directory and send out queries. I need to adopt the "I'm awesome, and so is my work" attitude. Because if I don't believe it, no one else will.

So, thanks.

I think there are nuggets of truth within this article, and some pretty good food for thought. However, as others have mentioned, it's a general problem that when discussions of sexism and/or racism come up, people become pretty firmly entrenched in their own experiences. And then you get this kind of point-tallying in the comments: on the one side there are people who, anecdotally, don't think they've experienced sexism; on the other there are, anecdotally, people who swear they have. And then there are the "strictly rational" folks who keep kind of a head count of how many are on either side and try to make some kind of proclamation that one side seems to be outweighing the other, as if people's experiences cancel each other out. It makes one side the dominant narrative.

This is problematic for several reasons. One, because your audience is never the same. You can repeat this exercise on any number of different websites (and in person too!) and your results will differ. A second reason, and in my opinion, a more weighty one, is that most people don't have a very nuanced understanding of how sexism and/or racism operate in today's world. Many women will say they've never experienced sexism because they've never been told in a meeting, "Why don't you go get me a sandwich instead of participating," but in fact, behind the scenes, they're secretly getting paid less than their male colleagues for the same job. Or, as leuce7 mentioned, when the time comes to start a family, she'll have to negotiate how she wants her career to progress, when her husband will likely never have a similar dilemma of how to approach his superiors with "I'm going to need to take some time off to help raise my kid."

I'm also going to throw this out there: the more "isms" you experience, the more obvious they are. For instance, you tend to hear a lot from successful white women (anecdotally) that they don't experience sexism, and you'll hear from many successful black men (anecdotally) that they don't experience racism. But a black woman, for instance? Notice how few high ranking black women there are compared to white women and black men. They're dealing with double the stereotypes. I can't really speak to the experiences of black women (and there are a lot of blogs that do, very well, so I'm not going to try) but I think the numbers are rather telling on this one.

I know that I didn't really address the article specifically throughout my comment, so on that note I'll just say that you won't see me discounting anyone's experiences, and that a woman who feels her career has not been tainted by sexism has the same right to publish that opinion as Roseanne does to publish her opposite opinion. However, I just can't help but personally feel that articles such as these display a bit of naivete. For the sake of complete disclosure, I have to submit that personally, I don't think that my career path thus far has been hindered by sexism. However, I don't have a kid yet, and further, simply by looking at the gendered makeup of superiors in my field, it is plain to me that in the decades that have preceded me, women simply aren't visible at the top in the same way that men have been. And at least based on what I witness every day, it is certainly not for lack of talent, ambition, or charisma. Only time will tell if in the coming years, my female peers will be able to progress in their positions equally with my male peers, and I hope they will, even if only so that we have less of a need to have these kinds of conversations.

You have some great musings! Perhaps I should contemplate about trying this myself.

This is a well written article that I have bookmarked for future reference. Have a good.

As for the male style of getting ahead vs. the female style of getting ahead, how about instead of implying that all the ways women do it are wrong we instead encourage men to be less "I'm awesome" about every fucking thing they do and give someone else a little credit? Man, I wish I had a quarter for everyone I've ever met who thought they were awesome when they (he or she) was, at best, barely competent.

EXACTLY