UK TV network ITV has officially banned all-male comedy writing teams, with a long-term goal of achieving 50:50 representation for women and men.
The move is an initiative from the network's head of comedy, Saskia Schuster, who that "an awful lot of my comedy entertainment shows are made up of all-male writing teams".
She added: "Too often the writing room is not sensitively run. It can be aggressive and slightly bullying."
Schuster is also behind ITV's new Comedy 50:50 initiative, which aims to increase the number of women working in comedy writing.
"There can all too often be a sense of tokenism towards the lone female," she wrote . "Or the dominant perception is that the female is there purely so the production can hit quotas."
ITV's comedy panel show Celebability was one of the first to experience changes, with its first two seasons hiring only male writers. Now, writer Brona C Titley has joined the mix, revealing at that while she had been in 15 writers' rooms over the years, she had been the only woman present in eight of them.
"If you have the same type of writers in terms of race or sexual orientation or gender, then you're only getting one kind of joke, and if you've got different voices in the room, you're getting different kinds of jokes," she said.
"You want to represent the wide audience that's watching. You want diversity in voice, or else it won't be as funny because it won't be appealing to as many people."
