Funny Women is launching a new industry award to recognise the female writers of unscripted comedy.

The Award will be accepting nominations of the best women comedy writers from radio, tv and digital producers of unscripted comedy from Monday 29th June - Friday 21st August.

The Funny Women Best Comedy Writer Award with Comedy 50:50 has been created to recognise the women among the unsung heroes of comedy - the gag, sketch and additional material writers of TV, Radio and digital entertainment.

Through Funny Women's involvement with ITV’s Comedy 50:50 initiative, it became increasingly clear that while women comedians were beginning to get a much better deal on screen and on the airwaves, female comedy writers for unscripted comedies were still vastly outnumbered by their male counterparts.   

This new award will celebrate the talent and tenacity of the women writers of Britain and Ireland, who have overcome barriers to entry to succeed in this highly competitive field. 

Funny Women Awards alumna Rachel Parris (pictured) is a champion of this new award. Parris says: "Having worked as a writer and a comic who works with writers, I know how important it is to have women in the writers room, not because they add some kind of uniquely feminine viewpoint or brand of 'female comedy', but because we exist, our voices matter, and by excluding or under-representing women, the comedy loses out. I’ve worked with some phenomenal female writers across TV and radio and I hope that this award helps to showcase the wealth of talent out there and to highlight how easy it is to find talented, experienced female writers to be part of any writing team.

Saskia Schuster, the founder of Comedy 50:50 says: "We're delighted to join with Funny Women to celebrate brilliant women in comedy.  There are lots of them out there and we hope that by crediting them for their talent, it will remind the industry to look at improving the diversity of their writing rooms.  Different voices lead to different jokes and more creative options, which in our view leads to better shows. Let's celebrate talent." 

The Funny Women Best Comedy Writer Award with Comedy 50:50 will be accepting nominations from producers, head writers and executives of all of TV and Radio’s Unscripted comedy shows (such as Newsjack, Have I Got News For You, The Mash Report etc) through the months of July and August and the winner will be revealed at The Funny Women Awards Grand Final in September.

Requests to nominate to [email protected]