American Women Try to Break Barriers in Show Business
Chelsea Shorte is telling jokes on a cold Wednesday night at an eatery in Alexandria, Virginia.
Shorte tells the restaurant-goers, many of them women, about her decision to perform stand-up comedy instead of improvisational humor.
"I got tired of being cast as people's moms even though I was 23 years old," she says. Shorte adds that men doing improv comedy think all women are mothers.
The women gathered at the restaurant understand her statement. Most of them hope to work as comics. They believe that by working with other women, they can get around the barriers set up by men in show business.
Comedian and businesswoman Victoria Elena Nones set up the Women in Comedy network, which provided support for the Alexandria restaurant event.
She founded the network in Chicago in 2015. It now has groups in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C.
Nones says she hopes the group will help women find and support each other as they make their own places in an industry that is often hostile to women.
The number of female writers on the top 250 films of any year from 1998 to the present has stayed about the same, at 13 percent. Of directors on the top 250 films of 2016, only seven percent were women. Only two percent of those top 250 films employed 10 or more women, noted the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.
Minorities do not rate much better. The heavily male culture of show business has a strong effect on what is expected of women -- and minorities -- in the industry.
Minka Wiltz says she gets angry when “I walk into a room and feel like a piece of meat.” Wiltz is a black actress and activist from Atlanta, Georgia.
Wiltz says abuse is a serious problem in today’s show business culture. She says the way to improve the situation is for women, people of color and other minorities to help each other tell their stories.
