Jane Espenson wants more women TV writers, but not for “a female point of view”:
[If] you suggest that female writers have a specific (and limited) purpose, you are inviting those showrunners to feel they don’t need to hire additional women writers once they have one woman in the room; they have their female character generator, their lens onto the female point of view. […]
I love the idea of a showrunner purposefully creating a staff that looks like the world: a balance of men and women, an emphasis in diversity of cultural background, racial makeup, and orientation, based on the idea that talent is evenly distributed among humanity. But if it’s done with some notion of splitting up the tasks of writing this or that type of character, I think we’re in danger of disparaging our own ability to look out of the eyes of someone else. If we stop trying to see the world through ALL of our characters, then we’re no longer in the empathy business.
Espenson suggests it’s a supply problem as well: you can’t staff writers who don’t exist. You won’t get more female TV writers until you get more women leaving film school with a overwhelming drive to write great television.