The chauvinist king of the stage, David Mamet, suffered a serious blow this past season when he attempted to center a play (The Anarchist) on two women. The characters never felt remotely organic and it was a short-lived disaster. Two of the better male playwrights, when it comes to writing women, are Jon Robin Baitz (Other Desert Cities) and Richard Greenberg (the new stage adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffanys). Does the fact they are openly gay figure in? (Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and William Inge, anyone?)

Over at the multiplex, one has to start with the fact that an infinitesimal number of commercial films are written or directed by women. All ten actresses nominated for Oscar performances this year played characters written by men. (Only six-year-old Hushpuppy was co-conceived by a woman.) The roles were obviously demanding, and their creators should be applauded. But were any as multi-faceted as their counterparts over in the male categories?

The most noteworthy female characters these days are probably on television, though more than a few are of the all-work-no-play (Homeland, The Killing) variety. The newest such girl on the block is Keri Russell as a KGB agent on the FX series The Americans. Josh Brand is among a group of respected writers of the series and insists the story, being a procedural, is the priority and, "Character to me has nothing to do with gender."

It may behoove such programs to add more women to the writer's rooms, (The Good Wife has the best cast of mixed-sexes, perhaps because it was created by one of each) but that is still no guarantee. Smash was created by Theresa Rebeck (since replaced by a man), who gave us four female characters, none of whom is really resonating. In one of those "show within a show within a show" scenarios, Debra Messing's writer-character is "saved" by a dramaturge (a man) who says her mushy take on Marilyn Monroe needs to be more about sex and power. I am sure there is a lesson here.

Screenwriter Stephen Schiff (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps) says what may be most challenging for men in all media are talky scenes between women. (Sex and the City comes to mind... though once again, it was a gay man calling the shots.) "But then it's probably tough for women to write a scene between guys doing guy things," says Schiff. This is where the mandatory Lena Dunham reference must be made. "Lena is depicting female and artistic thought processes in startling ways," insists my friend and avid reader/viewer Susan Horowitz. "But she is also giving us unusually dimensional views of male characters."

Dunham is nothing if not brave. She is also young and open to seeing both sexes clearly. For older males, they tread a bit more gingerly. "I try to go inside my characters and listen to them speak," says Schiff, a former journalist. "I can listen to a woman the same way I can listen to a man. But some people can't get outside their sex to do that." Josh Brand adds, "Most of us are influenced by the real women in our lives, which hopefully informs how we write our female characters."