Does DC hobble its female writers?

[scary harpy]

Does DC hobble its female writers?

Short answer: Yes.

Does DC hobble its male writers?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer:

I recall an interview of Peter David about his Supergirl series. He said that a 20 issue story arc became a 40 issue story arc because of the mandated Crossovers and Crises.

I also remember Felicia D Henderson on Teen Titans. She spent 12 issues reshaping the team to include the core members that she wanted. The next issue had a new writer.

I believe these are just 2 of many examples of DC not exactly helping the creative process.

[Gotham citizen]

DC doesn't have a great history with female representation among its creators, which is something it shares with a lot of the comics industry. That's something well known.

But I've recently started to wonder if DC's publishing side is setting up female creators to fail. Note that this is not probably a conscious decision, but rather the result of many small cuts or already established networks; not any cases of harassment but rather unthinking and ingrained sexism. The reason I started thinking about this is that some late runs by great female writers have produced lackluster results:

G Willow Wilson, one of the absolute top writers in the industry (Ms Marvel, and nominated for both Eisner and Hugos) became the lead writer for Wonder Woman. But her run was marred by a chaotic art situation and art that undercut the narrative. Then the latter parts of the run had very poor pacing, largely I believe by the need to suddenly push in Cheetah and Lex Luthor under YotV in the narrative.

Jody Houser, who seriously impressed me with Mother Panic, is right now on Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. She has done a marvelous job of showing them caring for each other, but she was given the leftovers of Heroes in Crisis, together with tying in with YotV. From a narrative-thematic view, she was given a **** sandwich, and the result has been a road trip story without narrative or moral substance. All the while Poison Ivy might be the character in DC who is most relevant to current world events and zeitgeist.

I also can't shake the feeling that Mairghread Scott—who managed to show that she could write a mature Babs-as-Batgirl with a healthy outlook on her time as Oracle—quit writing Batgirl because evil!Oracle was coming.

What I think we get here is that great female writers might get gigs at DC, but they don't get the creative freedom and environment to shine. Instead they have to write to specifications created by other, more "centrally located" writers and editors at DC.

In my opinion things like that happens everyday ever at the best male writers: for example when Lobdell wrote "Eve of destruction" for the X-men, he conceived a long story arc (if I remember well it should have 6 issue on the X-men title, 6 on Uncanny X-men and some specials), able to lay the basis for an entire run, but Quesada gave him only 4 issue on X-men and Uncanny X-men, because he wanted give the title to Morrison. Same thing happened to Kireon Gillen: Marvel gave him a very short run on Uncanny X-men, because they needed a stopgap awaiting of "Avengers versus X-men" or to Neal Adams: he started to work on X-men even if Marvel had already decided to close the titles or to Claremont: Marvel gave him the X-men being sure the title wouldn't be endure.
Moreover it seems odd to me say the DC hobbles its female writers, like if there were some sort of sexual discrimination, when since 1976 it was almost ever lead by women: Janette Khan (since 1976 to 2002) and Diane Nelson (since 2009 to 2018).

EDIT: I think Tynion is in a situation very similar (if not worst) to the one in which is Joelle Jones: he must write is run of Batman while King is going redefine the character in his Batman/Catwoman, so again I don't see differences among the male and the female writers.

[Lee Stone]

All writers get hobbled, both male and female, at DC, unless they're part of the Inner Circle, which is usually Didio, Lee, whoever is writing Batman at the time and whoever is writing the main Justice League title (not including fill-in writers).
Everyone else are just fodder and will have stories altered to accommodate events or simply vetoed or re-written if they contradict anything by the Inner Circle.