Why Women Playwrights Remain Underrepresented Despite Progress In Literature And Theatre |
It is coming to the end of Women’s Month, and March 27 is celebrated as World Theatre Day. It is perhaps worth pondering why there are still so few female playwrights when, in other forms of creative writing, women are making major inroads.
In India, there have been social and cultural biases against women in show business. Till the mid-20th century, women were not permitted to act on stage; men performed female roles. And until education for women became more widespread, women were kept away from the literary world.
A search for the reasons behind the gender gap in writing even today reveals filtering processes that exclude women. Access to language was a major hurdle, since formal education in classical languages (like Latin or Sanskrit) was historically restricted to men. As high-art drama was written in these languages, women were systemically excluded from the canon.
Women were often relegated to closet dramas—plays written to be read at home rather than performed in public. Writing for a public audience was seen as a breach of modesty, leading many women to write anonymously or not at all.
The plays taught in schools and universities are overwhelmingly by men (Shakespeare, Beckett,........