"The ‘Golden Age for Women in TV’ Is Actually a Rerun"

"Like leggings, comedies created by women came into vogue in the late 1980s, exploded in the early ’90s, went mainstream in the mid-90s and were shoved into the back of the closet around 1997. It took another decade before the next show solely created by a woman — Tina Fey’s “30 Rock” — made it back into the elite Emmy inner circle. Perhaps not coincidentally, leggings made a comeback around the same time.

Still, the rebound has been wobbly. A recent  Variety article trumpeted an “unprecedented” number of female showrunners, while also reporting that in 2013-14, only 15.1 percent of executive producer credits went to women, “down noticeably from 18.6 percent in the 2011-12 season.” That sounds less like a march to equality and more like a moonwalk, giving the illusion of forward motion when, in fact, the dancer is sliding backward. Progress for female directors has been even more elusive, which has prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to seek an industrywide investigation"

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/opinion/sunday/the-golden-age-for-women-in-tv-is-actually-a-rerun.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=opinion-c-col-top-region&region=opinion-c-col-top-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-top-region&_r=0

Important points. I think that we are often very excited to see "signs of progress" but lack a real understanding of what it means to solidify them, and see the actual things we are reaching for. I think, really, we don't know what equality looks like, so it's almost hard to be looking for it. But we know to be excited by powerful ladies, even when they are tokenized.