The problem isn’t women making art, it’s men not letting it in.
On what information is she basing this statement? Does she know that no women were involved in the process of selecting the plays? Which men barred female-written plays from being included? And if it was solely men that excluded female playwrights, how does she know that they did so because the playwrights were female?
She's essentially saying: some women's plays aren't included in the programme, therefore it must be men, and men alone, who are keeping them out, and the reason that they are keeping them out must therefore be based on sexism, which is inherent in the vast majority of men.
The irony: without any evidence to back up these claims, she herself comes across as sexist through these gross generalisations.
She even admits that she has no basis upon which to make her claims:
I do not know the behind-the-scenes complexities of programming 2016 at the Abbey.
But that doesn't deter her from continuing. I can only conclude that, once again, she is basing her argument on nothing other than her own opinions: she is happy to use this issue as a vehicle to push her opinions down other people's throats, and she doesn't even have the intellectual honesty to try and back up her claims with simple facts.
Also, while she has no problem naming the (male) director of the theatre
But with the greatest respect for the director of the Abbey Fiach MacConghail
she neglects to mention the very even gender balance of the board of the Abbey Theatre, which contains five men and four women. Despite not knowing about the "behind-the-scenes complexities", presumably she would at least know that the entire board, and not just its director, would be involved in setting the programme.
Also, beautiful irony here:
When people – and it’s nearly always men – say things such as “do you expect plays to be programmed just because they’re by women?” these statements are designed to shut down the conversation and assert male ownership over art.
What she's doing here is shutting down any attempt at a conversation based on the merit of works in question, as opposed to the gender of their author. She's actively, and without evidence, accusing people who will have no public right of reply of doing the exact thing that she has been given a public platform to do.
Her blanket statement about men here is another display of her own sexism defining the lens through which she is choosing to view this issue:
“I’m sorry that I have no female playwrights next season. But I’m not going to produce a play that is not ready and undermine the writer,” Mac Conghail tweeted. That’s all well and good, but how come so many men made the cut and women didn’t? If there were issues with plays being ready, or funding being in place, why did men benefit and women not? Is there really not one more play written by a woman, old or new, fit to be programmed?
Again, she's making baseless assumptions here to satisfy her agenda.
And yet again:
Is this just an Irish problem? No, but a cursory glance at the National Theatre in London’s current programme sees 20 featured productions listed on its website. Among those, there are seven plays with female writers, a series of debates featuring seven women and seven men, and a performance festival featuring four female artists and three male artists.
When in doubt: cherry-pick information from a single source to try and make your opinions seem as though they are based upon facts.
Once again, Una Mullally displays her own incapability of dealing with anything fact-based. And, yet again, she drags down the standard of writing in The Irish Times by making outrageous and damaging claims based on nothing other than her own opinions. She seems to have nothing to offer journalism except a juvenile desire to force her opinions on others without having even the slightest bit of solid evidence to substantiate the points she's trying to make.
I genuine can't believe she gets paid to write this worthless drivel, and I can't believe the mentality of the idiots of the comment section who unquestioningly hop on whatever bandwagon she hitches up.