Why are there so few ladies in late night comedy?

Last Thursday, the Paley Center for Media and the Writer’s Guild of America East hosted a panel on women in late night comedy writing. The five panelists and the moderator, all women (and all white), were or used to be writers for The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and assorted other late night comedy shows. The panel, convened in response to a spate of articles last year about the dearth of women in late night, was supposed to tackle a host of pressing questions. Why are there so few women hosts? Why are there so few women writers? How can we change the numbers? Unfortunately, it didn’t really answer any of those questions.

As Jezebel’s Irin Carmon reported, the panel focused primarily on the women’s individual paths to their current positions, and on the obstacles that they, as individuals, had faced along the way. The question of why women as a group are so poorly represented in late night was barely touched upon, and when it was the responses were frustratingly familiar.

Most of the women on the panel seemed to think that sexism wasn’t a hurdle to women’s success in their line of work. Despite the fact that three out of five of them were or had recently been the only women writers employed by their show, and despite the fact that almost all the late night hosts are men, most of the panelists seemed to resist the idea that it is especially difficult for women to break in and succeed in late night comedy. And perhaps they were right. But if that’s the case, I find it hard to understand why the field remains so very male-dominated. There’s no shortage of funny women out there, and plenty of them, I’m sure, want to be late night hosts and writers – if it’s no more difficult for women to break in than men, then where are all the women?

When we talk about why certain fields – finance, hard sciences, etc. – are male-dominated, we often find ourselves circling around the same explanations. When we assume (rightly, in my opinion) that women are just as capable as men of doing finance or being funny, we end up talking about differences in self-selection and self-promotion (women don’t apply or put themselves forward for promotions and raises at the same rate as men) and sustainability (in careers with long, intense working hours, women often have to leave if they want to have kids, while men don’t). While the latter didn’t come up on Thursday night, the former did, as did women’s ability to cut it in a work environment that is male-dominated not just statistically, but culturally too.

The reason that Thursday’s panel felt a little like déjà vu was because around this time last year, I was finishing up my senior thesis on the experience of women in sales and trading on Wall Street. As part of my research I interviewed women who worked on both the sales side and the trading side of the trading floor, many of whom were the only women in their work groups or even on their entire trading desks (originally, I just wanted to talk to traders, but there weren’t enough women on the trading side to make up a viable sample).What I found there was a similar tendency to view gendered problems as individual ones. That there are so few women, and even fewer women leaders on Wall Street, I was told over and over again, had nothing to do with gender. It was because the women simply weren’t tough enough. They weren’t aggressive enough, or loud enough. They took sexist jokes too seriously, or interpreted the occasional pat on the butt or come-on from a male superior as sexual harassment, when really the superior in question was just an “old-school” guy who had entered the workforce before political correctness became the law of the land.

These are the explanations the women salespeople and traders gave me. Perhaps more upsettingly, the traders and salespeople I spoke to looked down on the women who couldn’t hack it and who complained about the culture of the trading floor. They had particular distaste for women who filed discrimination suits against their employers. When I asked her about women who had filed such suits Alana, a twenty-five year-old working in sales, said, “I think that women who take that attitude are really at fault, because if you approach everybody like a victim, you’re not going to get anywhere.” Responding to a similar line of questioning, Maddie, a twenty-four year-old trader at the same bank said, “if you’re about to go bitch or complain about something that’s stupid, this isn’t really the industry for you, I think.”

Compare that to an exchange that happened on Thursday night. Jill Goodwin, who writes for Letterman, said, “I don’t know if it’s because of being a woman or because I’m newer, but it’s all about the confidence with which you pitch things. I’m still new, so I talk it down before I even open my mouth. You know it’s like, ‘Well, this isn’t going to be any good, but I’ll say it anyway.’ And that’s something that I have to get over.” But Goodwin also said that the presence of another woman -assuming that they would support each other – would make her life easier: “If there were another woman in the room to say, ‘Come on Jill, you can do it,’ you know, be supportive, that would be great. But there’s not right now.”

Hallie Haglund, one of only two women writers at The Daily Show, responded, saying that it wasn’t a matter of one’s gender, but simply a matter of choosing to be aggressive. “In our room, I’ve often given myself that excuse – you know, there are all these guys and they’re so loud,” she said. “But the other female writer on the show is actually a lot more outgoing than I am. And seeing her has helped me tell myself, you can’t write yourself off or make excuses for yourself. It’s not about that — it’s about the decision you make to be aggressive.” Haglund, who at another point in the evening spoke quite compellingly about identifying with the image of Hillary Clinton, another lone woman, during the 2008 campaign, was conveying the same message as Maddie and Alana: Gender isn’t an excuse for failure. Complaints of sexism won’t be tolerated. Success is about aggression, not about gender. And the fact that we tend to be less aggressive has nothing to do with the fact that we’re women.

It is no coincidence that the discussion of why there are so few women in late night comedy sounded so similar to a discussion of why there are so few women on the trading floor. In both industries, women are perceived to be naturally less gifted, ensuring that only the best women will put themselves forward. And in both industries, being loud and aggressive is a job requirement. Given that women in our society are discouraged from being loud and aggressive, the real failure of the women who can’t hack it in a male-dominated work environment seems to be that they are, well, women.

Listening to the panelists on Thursday night, I was frustrated, but hardly surprised, that they insisted on portraying what is partly a cultural problem as a purely individual one. In late night as on Wall Street, the stakes are high. Speak out too loudly and you risk rocking the boat. You risk inviting the disapproval of the many men, and the few women, around you. You might end up as a cautionary tale, one of those women who couldn’t hack it. You might even lose your job.

To their credit, all the panelists were generous with their wisdom when audience members asked them for advice on how to get into the industry, regardless of one’s gender. I only hope that they’re as generous in nurturing female talent and, if they get the chance, in hiring and mentoring other women. And I hope that soon, Jill Goodwin will get that woman colleague she’s been hoping for. Or, heaven forbid, a woman host to write for.