Who Said Women Aren't Funny?

Female writers have emerged as a driving force behind comedy pilots being ordered for the coming fall season

In a ludicrous—and roundly derided—Vanity Fair column from 2007 titled “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” the late polemicist Christopher Hitchens argued that humor cannot be found in the absence of a Y chromosome. American television audiences might beg to differ.

Of the 44 comedy pilots ordered by the networks in anticipation of the 2012-13 season, 18 were conceived and/or written by women. NBC and ABC are leading the trend, accounting for 14 of the season’s female-driven comedies, or exactly half their combined sitcom orders.

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