A rough back of the napkin estimate of the performers shows that this years Bridgetown is roughly 75% male performers.

Great job on getting some equity for women on the bill! That's a really, really progressive showing and clearly demonstrates their dedication to dismantling institutional sexism in the comedic arts.

Oh shit, Throwing Shade is the fucking best. See you there.

@Graham: it seems like a lot more diverse lineup than last year. I'm excited, for one.

@C&B: We had a similar discussion last year (http://www.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX…).

My calculations for 2013 were that it was 79% male performers. And also Andy Wood pulled that whole, "more men applied" canard. This is the same type of bullshit gender disparity you see in the presentation lineups for many professional conferences (which is what this essentially is), and they all make the exact same excuse.

What it really means is that the organizers are too lazy (or blind to the disparity) to try and recruit women.

So yeah... this is at best a really incremental increase.

They don't recruit anyone; that's not how the festival works. They simply announce applications have opened, then a ton of people send in bios and videos, and a month or two later, they announce which were successful.

And by the sound of it, the ratio of men to women at the festival is identical to the ratio of male to female applicants. Which in turn means that the likelihood of an applicant to the festival being accepted or rejected is independent of their gender.

Any inequality in the line-up comes from something far deeper, that starts long before anything the festival directors have a hand in. From the festival's point of view, a female comic applying to the festival has exactly the same chance of getting in as one of her male peers.