Margaret Thatcher might not approve of Agent 160, the new theatre company set up by playwright Lisa Parry and dramaturg Louise Stephens Alexander, even if this UK-wide venture is named after one of the nom de plumes (Astrea was another) of a government spy in the employ of Charles II.

The fact that Agent 160, aka Astrea, was in fact Aphra Behn, who was not only one of the earliest recorded female playwrights in history, but was also savvy enough to make money from it, might suggest a kind of feminist separatism by stealth to the once-Iron Lady.

As those behind Agent 160 are keen to stress, however, their idea of promoting work solely by female playwrights is more about addressing a serious imbalance which Parry discovered while attending a conference in the National Theatre's Olivier space in 2010. During the day, it was revealed that of all the plays produced in the UK, only 17% are written by women.

"If you flip that figure around, you're saying that 83% of plays being commissioned are by men," Parry observes. "Now, I don't have a problem with male playwrights, but I just wonder why it is that I'm not seeing more women writers onstage. We have to ask why women writers are being discriminated against in this way, and why gender doesn't seem to be an issue any more."

With this in mind, Parry and Stephens Alexander approached all of the female writers they liked with a view to getting involved with Agent 160. The first fruits of this new initiative will be Agent 160 Presents, which will see 12 new plays presented over two nights at the Arches in Glasgow following dates in Cardiff and London. With writers pulled in from all four nations of the UK, five of the plays have been rehearsed in Scotland, five in Wales and four in London. Two of the cast are from Scotland, three from Wales and two from London, while the four directors will include Kate Nelson of the Edinburgh-based Nutshell Theatre.

Scottish writers involved include Ioanna Anderson, whose play Six Acts of Love was seen at the Tron a couple of years ago, Abigail Docherty, whose Sea and Land and Sky won the inaugural Open Stage competition, also at the Tron, Clare Duffy, co-author of Stellar Quines' forthcoming bi-lingual play, ANA, and Morna Pearson, whose play, Distracted, won the Meyer-Whitworth playwriting award.

Despite Agent 160's motivation, things do seem to be different in Scotland. As with David Hare, it's been possible to see three plays by Liz Lochhead in the last year, while work by Rona Munro has appeared on both Scottish and London stages. Then there is Zinnie Harris, Linda McLean, Sue Glover, Nicola McCartney, Sam Holcroft, Molly Taylor and others who have all had new work produced in Scotland over the last year. On top of this, the female-led Stellar Quines Theatre Company has worked with women artists of all disciplines.

Elsewhere, Abi Morgan appears equally prolific, both for the National Theatre of Scotland with 27, and with Frantic Assembly's recent tour of Lovesong, which stopped off at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow. Indeed, Morgan's name is especially notable here, as she also penned the screenplay for The Iron Lady, the BAFTA-winning film portrait of Britain's first female Prime Minister.

Far from championing women's rights, however, Mrs Thatcher took on all-comers, including the female-led protests at Greenham Common. The parallel rise of both feminism and Thatcherism in the 1970s also gave rise to single-issue theatre companies that included the Monstrous Regiment company, who took their name from a tract by John Knox, and who scored an early success with Vinegar Tom by Caryl Churchill.

Churchill's cachet rose throughout the 1980s with the likes of Top Girls, which looked at the very notion of Thatcherism through imagined meetings between strong women throughout history. If Monstrous Regiment and others had an explicit political agenda, Agent 160's is less overt, with the emphasis more on presenting work that is both intelligent and entertaining.

"We're presenting a platform for women writers rather than women's rights," is how Parry sees it, "but we recognise as well that we probably only exist off the back of the groundwork that the likes of Monstrous Regiment did before us. We obviously exist for a political reason, yet neither are we going to be overtly political about it. None of us wants to become niche. I'm female but I'm also a writer. Being female doesn't enter my head, because I just am, whereas being a writer enters my head all the time.

"We want people to come along and enjoy the plays for what they are, and not care about the gender of the writer, or worry that it's by a token female writer. It's like when Rebecca Lenkiewicz had her play, Her Naked Skin on in 2008, and everybody made a big deal of the fact that she was the first female writer to have something on at the Olivier. It shouldn't matter, but it's taken that long that of course it does."

As Parry observes, there are very obvious practical reasons that might prevent women playwrights sustaining a career, and which Agent 160 would like to address.

"We've got an ambition in terms of helping with childcare and maternity," she says, "which other companies may or may not do, but we also give the playwright the power over the process, which I think women find an empowering thing. If there are barriers to women getting work on, you can't separate them from the other issues, where people might be expected to work for free, or where areas outside the big cities might not have venues or any kind of theatrical infra-structure."

By 2012, of course, the first wave of 1970s feminism should have made companies such as Agent 160 unnecessary. While today's reactionary climate has given Parry and Stephens Alexander's arguments a revitalised currency, things are looking up.

"There are people trying to address things in terms of commissioning," Parry admits, "but if you're commissioned by a big established company, it takes a long time for those plays to come through. One of the good things about being a smaller company is that you can be slightly more responsive and flexible. I'm sure there are a lot of great commissions by women sitting in a drawer which I'm sure we'll be seeing soon."

Agent 160 presents Agent 160, The Arches, Glasgow, February 22-23 www.agent160theatre.co.uk www.thearches.co.uk