We really are living in the golden age of television. A new season of TV drama is greeted with as much anticipation and excitement as the release of a Hollywood blockbuster. This week, we are welcoming back two big hits – Fleabag and Derry Girls. Killing Eve will follow next month. And among the highly anticipated premieres will be Gentleman Jack, Kaos and Adult Material.

All these high-end dramas have one thing in common: they are written by enormously talented women. Is this a sign that opportunities for female writers are improving? I hope so, but I wouldn’t bet my next mortgage payment on it. And as I pay my mortgage by writing television, I wish I could be more optimistic.

A year ago, more than 100 female writers signed an open letter to the UK’s TV drama commissioners. We were asking why most of their prime-time output was written by men. As one of the signatories, and deputy chair of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB), I received the feedback from commissioners, past and present. They were polite, thoughtful and in complete denial that there was a problem. Even those who conceded there was assured us it was getting better.

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What those commissioners didn’t know was that I had the receipts. A year earlier, the WGGB had commissioned an independent study into the number of women writing for TV and film in the UK over the last decade. Far from being an improving situation for female writers, we discovered that the amount of TV written by women had flatlined. There was an approximate 50-50 gender split when we looked at higher education writing courses, children’s television and the soaps, but that balance changed as writers moved up the career ladder. Only 14% of prime-time TV was written by women during the study period.

However, the report was embargoed until later in the year while it was checked and double-checked. In other words, proofed against the mansplainers and nitpickers who were bound to be triggered by its very existence. So I was unable to reply to those commissioners with the facts. They were to remain in a blissful state of denial for another couple of months.

Meanwhile, the open letter got a bit of interest from the press and I was invited on to Woman’s Hour to discuss it. As I sat in a broom cupboard-cum-recording studio at BBC Leeds waiting to be introduced, I heard Jenni Murray trail the interview by asking how female writers could claim to be underrepresented when Sally Wainwright, Kay Mellor and Heidi Thomas were household names. I grabbed a pen and scribbled a list of male writers I would consider at the same level. When Murray asked me the question in the interview, I managed to reel off about 15 names before she conceded defeat.

And this is why I am nervous about declaring that British TV is entering a new age of gender equality. Placing a handful of top writers with hit shows on a pedestal only masks what is really going on. The same is true for writers of colour and those with disabilities, who are also woefully underrepresented. The only way to know what is really going on is through proper equality monitoring across the broadcasters. Unfortunately, the much-vaunted Project Diamond, which is supposed to monitor diversity across all the major UK channels, has proved to be flawed and is being boycotted by the WGGB and other entertainment unions. To put it clearly, the next time someone in a position of power tells me things are getting better, they had better know that for a fact.

That is not to say that broadcasters are not taking the problem seriously. The WGGB has had some encouraging meetings with receptive people from across the main channels. ITV’s controller of comedy, Saskia Schuster, has pledged that 50% of ITV’s comedy output will soon be written by women. And she’s backed up that pledge by implementing practical policies such as setting up a database of female comedy writers, hosting networking events and providing mentorships for new writers. It’s a great start, but it will take time to see whether it yields significant results.

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Comedy has been a particularly hostile environment for female writers pitching ideas, who have often heard commissioners say: “We’ve already got something about women.” Drama writers also hear this. To be clear, female is a gender not a genre. And from what I can see, no commissioner has ever looked at their slate of commissions and thought: “It’s a bit man-heavy.”

And that’s another reason why I am reluctant to declare that gender equality has been achieved. It is unfair to constantly single those women out to be the baton-carriers for their colleagues; because for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every hit, there is a miss. For every show that inspires five-star reviews, there is one that inspires viewers to reach for the remote. And so if we claim that more women should be commissioned simply because writers of a similar gender have had a hit, what happens when someone in the sisterhood writes a gold-plated turkey? Female writers suddenly become “risky” and “niche” again. A level playing field means we all have a chance to win or lose irrespective of our gender, race or disability.

• Lisa Holdsworth is a TV and theatre writer and deputy chair of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. Her credits include Call the Midwife and Midsomer Murders