2. Gendering the Screenwriter

This chapter examines the way that women are limited in their ability to even take up the subject position of screenwriter. Looking at the way screenwriting is discursively positioned reveals perceptions and expectations about the role that will be explored in more detail in subsequent chapters. Recurring in the talk of film workers is a belief in special creative individuals and meritocracy, the combination of which ensures that the status quo is upheld. Contradictory discourses around creative collaboration and homophily are also ubiquitous but curiously less hegemonic. Analysing the discursive work being done in the talk of film workers reveals that some discourses on screenwriting work are more readily acknowledged than others. To explain this, progress narratives that insist ‘things are getting better’ are unpacked to show how talk actually upholds gender inequality.