Okay, so I know a name is not necessarily representative of a person who identifies as female. I say that because I’m basing a statistic on an unreliable data point… that is, the number of writers who I identified as identifying as female who submitted plays for consideration via our website. Of the approximate 100 scripts submitted in January, only one third were written by women, that is, those I identified as writers who identified as female based on the name that I, in my biased experience of what I have unreliably identified as a female identifying name, assigned to the writer of that script. Now, please know we are equally interested in works by writers who identify with any gender, all genders or no gender at all. However, if the content or theme of the play involves gender issues, and we find it of interest, authenticity and personal experience matters. But, back to writers with names I assign female. Fair or not, I would like to see more plays by persons who identify as female in our catalog and therefore, reliably, encourage more woman to submit plays for consideration for publishing no matter what race, religion, or sexual preference. But please, those of you who identify as male, no submitting under a false unreliably female-sounding name because you think it will get your play read. It still comes down to writing quality and when it comes to quality there is no place for gender bias.
