Female writers are still significantly in the minority in all areas of the arts according to a new report. Comedy is one of the main areas where they lack representation.

The report, entitled Gender Inequality and Screenwriters and commissioned by the Writers' Guild of Great Britain as part of their Equality Writes campaign, says that the percentage of television episodes written predominantly by women over 10 years is just 28%. This drops to 14% for prime-time, 11% for comedy and 9% for light entertainment.

WGGB Chair Gail Renard said: "It’s not bad enough there’s a glass ceiling for women in television. Now it turns out there are glass walls as well.

More than 200 working writers were polled and only one in 20 agreed that "the way writers are hired, and scripts are commissioned, is fair and free from discrimination". The majority of respondents suggested that they had seen evidence of discrimination.

QI presenter and writer Sandi Toksvig said: "There is no shortage of talented women writers in the UK, and therefore no excuse that so few of them are getting commissions in film and TV."

Writers' Guild of Great Britain President and screenwriter Olivia Hetreed called on commissioners to give equal opportunities to women writers: "I have been asked about the dearth of female screenwriters in this country ever since my first feature film put me into that endangered species bracket. I and others were reassuring: 'It's just a matter of time. It's getting better. It will work itself out'. But more than a decade later, this new research shows that the number of women writing films has flat-lined at abjectly low levels."

Read the full report here.