Anonymous asked: Why are there less woman on Harold Teams than men? My classes seem pretty even, genderwise. Is there an unconscious bias that favors men? How can I address this issue without sounding like a jerk? Do I have to be pretty to get on a Harold or Maude Team? I see a lot of scrubby older guys and younger cute girls. Is my thinking fixed and somewhat paranoid? Possibly!

FULL DISCLOSURE RIGHT AT THE TOP: I is a white dude from New England whose family had enough cash to send him to college. Got it? Okay.



EDITED TO ADD: The most interesting answer would come from getting all female performers from the UCB in a room —- no men allowed — and ask them. That would be interesting. I would want to hear the answer.

Okay, onto this long ramble.

WORTH TALKING ABOUT

“Women vs. men” stuff is always interesting, though also always fraught with personal bias, anecdotal evidence and kneejerk reactions. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be talked about. It should be discussed without apology. But if you want to have a productive discussion that will change things, it is best approached in a calm, non-scolding manner. I like the tone of your question, for example. It feels curious and honest without being accusatory — which is the most helpful posture.



The way to talk about it without sounding like a jerk is to just take a breath and do it as honestly as you can. And be cool when people get a bit huffy. People get huffy. Just stay cool and nod your head that you understand and hope that your calmness calms them down.

Try to have empathy that no one gets up in the morning and says “Today I will be biased.” Artists like good art, and the people who put house teams together want good teams above all. That is for real true. But bias does happen anyway! It’s mysterious how it happens.

Honesty, empathy, patience and experimentation are the answer, somehow.



WARNING: STATISTICS AHEAD

In December of 2011, while I was running the school at UCB in NYC I was talking with then Artistic Director Nate Dern about male-female ratios. He asked what the ratios were in the classes, and I was stunned to realize I had no idea.

So, Erik Tanouye and I started looking at male-female ratios in the classes. It was tough because we hadn’t been recording people’s gender. So I had an intern go over 6 months worth of improv classes (first 6 months of 2011) and GUESS the gender of the students based on name. I know. Not a great system. I also got some teachers to indicate some of the names we weren’t sure about. Some teachers didn’t want to do it, others were just disorganized and never got around to it. Hardly an exact science, but it was a start. We got numbers on about 2000 registrations.

What we found in was that for that 6 month period — the male/female ratio was about 1 man for every 1 woman in level 1, and it steadily became more men until it was about 1.3 men for every 1 woman in level 4. Not even as bad as I had feared.



BUT: You had to be approved to get to level 5. And what we found was that in level 5 the ratio was 2.2 MEN FOR EVERY ONE WOMAN in the advanced level. More than two to one!

WHOA. I was stunned. Were we approving men at a higher rate than women? We checked that — and no. We were approving just about the same percentage of men as we were women. There were slightly more men than women to pick from, but there was no reason that we shouldn’t at least have the same ratio in level 5 as we did in level 4.

Women were just way less interested in level 5 than the men. I had no idea why.

I also looked for the first time at the gender ratios of the teachers and discovered to my horror that in two years I had only ever assigned one female teacher to teach the level two classes — 44 of the 47 level 2 sessions had been taught by men. What disturbed me was I didn’t even realize that. It wasn’t a conscious decision. But it had happened! Weird.

I reported this all to the teachers, and everyone immediately had guesses as to why all this was. But they were just guesses.

COLBY INITIATIVE

So we started something called the Colby Initiative (named by Shannon O’Neill after the Amy Poehler character on the UCB Show). Our mission: increase the number of women in level 5 improv classes. More informally: would Amy Poehler have taken level 5 at our school?

I liked it because it was specific and measurable.

We threw a lot of things against the wall: Shannon started the Lady Jam and started teaching free workshops for female improvisers. We told the level 4 teachers to specifically recommend level 5 for the strong female improvisers. I promoted more female teachers into higher levels, gave more classes to existing female teachers, and hired female teachers first.

We all had different opinions on which of these things mattered. But rather than argue about it, we tried whatever we could. Find it on its feet, like good improvisers do.

People who worked on the Colby Initiative got a little money for their time and we got teachers working on it in their spare time. Chelsea Clarke led a group of teachers in calling female students who were given the highest rating from their level 4 teachers but who never took another class. Chelsea and others called them and basically asked “why did you never take another class?”

(They didn’t ask that directly. They just took a general survey of their experience at the school. We didn’t say “we are trying to figure out why women are less interested in level 5.” But in the general survey we asked why they had started taking classes, and if they planned on taking more.)

WHY DID YOU STOP TAKING CLASSES?

I wish I could give you a hard answer here. But we’re not experts in data analysis or methodology. And there was no one single overpowering answer. These people in general had really good things to say about their experience at UCB, but they also said they felt they were done. Common things said: classes were too expensive, the good teachers’ classes sold out too frustratingly fast and that they had gotten what they wanted out of UCB classes and were trying other things.



What we suspected —- and it was just a suspicion — was that they didn’t think they had enough of a chance to get on a UCB house team to make it worth the time/money/trouble of taking more classes unless it was a great teacher.

Maybe it was just a vicious cycle: more men on the stage makes the men in the classes try harder makes for more men on stage? That is just a guess.

I will say that one year later the ratio of men to women had evened a bit to be 1.5 men for every woman. Better, at least. Moving in the right direction.

What I was most happy about was that we tried stuff. You can theorize all day (and post rants, and re-tumblr things that make you and others outraged), but in the end the only way to really learn anything is to try it. There was also no finger-pointing within the ranks. It wasn’t like “you did X wrong” and instead it was like “what if we tried X?” Our years of performing together gave us respect for each other, and we focused on results rather than arguing.

LIKE BEGETS LIKE

My personal feeling is that LIKE BEGETS LIKE. If you want more women in the classes, get more talented women on stage. People take classes if they identify with the people on stage. Gender and race are powerful factors when people relate to each other.

Though of course they’re not the only ones. Comedy nerds like other comedy nerds regardless of gender or race, of course.

But it comes down to this: If you feel like you belong on the stage, you’ll take the classes and stick with it.

I think that demographics and diversity is something worth worrying about and trying to consciously improve. I also think that you have to be sensitive to the fact that communities form organically and that you CAN’T really meddle beyond a certain degree. You can nudge and push but there has to be a natural momentum which you are accelerating. You try stuff and then try to figure: is that working? It’s like an improv scene — you know it when you feel it if it’s working.

As far as your question about wondering if you have to be pretty to get on a team: I think there IS a bias towards attractive people but I think it’s there for both men and women. Especially if you look at percentages. There is a much higher percentage of attractive male improvisers on the stage than in the community in general! That’s just my impression. I see attractive men and women doing better than their less attractive counterparts in ALL AREAS OF LIFE UGH.

POSTSCRIPT: added April 23, 2015. I’ve gotten a few messages asking why we didn’t devote the same energy to other diversity issues, like for example black improvisers, gay improvisers. Two part answer. Part One: we do have the diversity program which has scholarships and workshops and jams and stuff. So we were/are worrying about that. But I recognize that doesn’t seem like the same level of intensity as the Colby initiative. That’s because of Part Two: note that we had fifty-fifty male/female in level one and LOST the women after level four. Trying to hold onto a group of people who started but left seemed like something that was CLOSE. Like a solvable doable thing. So we bore down on it. Figuring maybe we could learn something about the weird world of trying to change demographics in the process. Also, we’re idiots who are just trying stuff as we go.