‘The Simpsons’ writer banned from writer’s room because of her gender

The writer says it wasn’t a pleasant place to work at the beginning.

Cartoonist and writer, Mimi Pond, was the woman behind the first ever full-length broadcast episode of The Simpsons in 1989 which went on to earn two Emmy awards. Despite being a highly respected writer having published work in The National Lampoon, The Village Voice, and The New York Times, Mimi was never invited to join the writer’s room. Mimi says the job initially came about through Matt Groening who asked his cartoonist friends if they’d like to get involved – Mimi was the only one who said yes. However, when she arrived on set, she was never invited to join her fellow writers, and Mimi says it was because one of the showrunners at the time didn’t want women on the team.

"I was never invited to be on staff, and I never knew why for the longest time," she told Jezebel. "No one ever called me or explained to me or apologised or anything. And it wasn’t until years later that I found out that Sam Simon, who was the showrunner, didn’t want any women around because he was going through a divorce. "It had remained a boys’ club for a good long time,” Mimi continued. “I feel like I was just as qualified as anyone else who came along and got hired on the show, and it was just because I was a woman that I was not allowed entry into that club. "I always wind up being the turd in the punchbowl because the show is so beloved and everything, and I’m sorry to burst bubbles but [laughs]. It wasn’t a pleasant experience for me."

While you’d imagine things have changed a lot since the early 90s, you might be surprised to hear that things are still very much the same. The AV Club went through all 618 episodes of The Simpsons only to find that just eight perfect of those have included a female screenwriter.