Gendered Reading:
There’s been a great discussion over at Readerville over this article which refers to a seeming gender bias in the New York Times Book Review. It claims that, according to a fairly rigorous survey, the percentage of books the Times reviews and the sex of the reviews skews overwhelmingly male. Extrapolate this and quickly run into some mingling contradictions. Acquisitions editors at major publishing houses (i.e. the people who buy book projects) are a majority female as are marketers and publicists. CEOs and COOs (the people holding the purse strings) are majority male. The winners of pretigious book awards like the Pultizer, the National Book Award and the Nobel are mostly male. 70% of book buyers in the United States are female.
I certainly don’t have an answer to these disparities. I think they are much more complicated than traditional gender bias and sexism. But I think as readers and book buyers, most of us are complicit in a kind of personal ghettoization that unwittingly lets this inequity fester. I ask this then: How many of us make a concerted effort to read and buy books by authors of genderd different than ours? How many of us are in dual gender writing and book groups? Perhaps equal representation begins at home.
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10 Replies to “Gendered Reading:”
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Funny – unless gender plays a huge role in the story line of a book (mother/daughter relationships, girl or boy looking for love, etc) I never really pay much attention to (and in some cases, never even notice) whether the author is male or female. That said, 8 of the last 10 books I’ve read were written by men.
My question – what percentage of published authors in any given genre – preferably literary fiction, since that’s what I read most – are male?
Funny – unless gender plays a huge role in the story line of a book (mother/daughter relationships, girl or boy looking for love, etc) I never really pay much attention to (and in some cases, never even notice) whether the author is male or female. That said, 8 of the last 10 books I’ve read were written by men.
My question – what percentage of published authors in any given genre – preferably literary fiction, since that’s what I read most – are male?
Hard to say Sarah. Depends on the house and the season. Although this conversation did start with someone noticing an unusually number of books by men published in this upcoming Spring season.
Hard to say Sarah. Depends on the house and the season. Although this conversation did start with someone noticing an unusually number of books by men published in this upcoming Spring season.
I took a look at last year’s reading list (the first year I wrote down everything I read) and found that about 25% of the fiction I read (10 out of 41) were by women. Not so hot, I guess – I don’t go out of my way not to read women, but it seemed to come out that way. For what it’s worth, I read books by the following women authors last year: Toni Morrison, Angela Carter, Flannery O’Connor, Virginia Woolf, Aimee Bender, Renata Adler, Kaye Gibbons, Jeanette Winterson, Paula Fox, and Susan Steinberg.
I took a look at last year’s reading list (the first year I wrote down everything I read) and found that about 25% of the fiction I read (10 out of 41) were by women. Not so hot, I guess – I don’t go out of my way not to read women, but it seemed to come out that way. For what it’s worth, I read books by the following women authors last year: Toni Morrison, Angela Carter, Flannery O’Connor, Virginia Woolf, Aimee Bender, Renata Adler, Kaye Gibbons, Jeanette Winterson, Paula Fox, and Susan Steinberg.
Also, since you asked – my grad writing program is about 50/50 men and women. And my book group is mostly women, but so far, we’ve only read male authors (Confederacy of Dunces by O’Toole and Go Down, Moses by Faulkner.)
Also, since you asked – my grad writing program is about 50/50 men and women. And my book group is mostly women, but so far, we’ve only read male authors (Confederacy of Dunces by O’Toole and Go Down, Moses by Faulkner.)
For that matter, how many readers conciously try to read outside of their own income brackets, their own races, their own sexuality, and the like? You can keep making these PC arguments all you want. Personally, I try to read as many women writers (writers of all types really) as I can. Trying to keep a deliberate ratio going strikes me as a rum exercise. Besides, who’s to say that men can’t write about women (or vice versa)?
However, having said that, in the last three weeks, I’ve grooved to work by Joan Didion, Margaret Atwood, and Carol Shields. Not because they’re women (although they do bring some solid perspective), but because all of them are good writers.
For that matter, how many readers conciously try to read outside of their own income brackets, their own races, their own sexuality, and the like? You can keep making these PC arguments all you want. Personally, I try to read as many women writers (writers of all types really) as I can. Trying to keep a deliberate ratio going strikes me as a rum exercise. Besides, who’s to say that men can’t write about women (or vice versa)?
However, having said that, in the last three weeks, I’ve grooved to work by Joan Didion, Margaret Atwood, and Carol Shields. Not because they’re women (although they do bring some solid perspective), but because all of them are good writers.