Need to Know on PBS - Latest Comments in ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Diane — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 13:30:14 -0000

Women do not write mostly about the above topics. One thing is clear. Perception is often skewed.

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Diane — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 13:28:29 -0000

Look at Nora Roberts. She publishes a number of books, researches for her books, hires a nanny for her kids so she can write, writes daily..... . You can generalize, but why? Oh yes. And who is the wealthiest author of them all? Who wrote the Harry Potter books? She researched for her books, and not mild research, either.

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Bonita87 — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 15:21:30 -0000

Is it that women want to confine themselves to these topics or that editors think it's what the public wants to hear women write about? The New Yorker just published an essay by Tina Fey about her conflicted feelings over whether she should have another child. I felt I'd read often essays on that particular topic both in their pages and in the Atlantic's pages. Perhaps editors assume we want more Mommy War type essays. Surely there are other topics that Tina Fey could also address.

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Jim — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 03:20:52 -0000

fix your own issues steve and stop projecting.

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Cedar — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 18:37:48 -0000

Talent isn't always so neatly divided. Some very good fiction is being written by collaborators, one female, one male: the Rutledge novels by the team known as Charles Todd, for example, or the recent "Deep Creek" by the pair of Princeton writers who work under the joint pen name of Dana Hand, which the Washington Post named as a Best Novel of 2010.

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Carol — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:46:37 -0000

If you're so busy looking at what's fair, you might be neglecting what's fine.

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

guest — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 10:17:09 -0000

Just another Glenn Beck alias, making as much sense.

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

guest — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 23:29:30 -0000

Victimhood is blatantly connotated throughout the article.

"why is it so threatening.."

Have your logic second-guessed by a male and run straight to the
'threatened' card instead of working through the details of the argument. I'm not threatened, just tired of this constant attack under the guise of feminist heroism.

"I certainly wouldn't preclude..."

Oh, you wouldn't? Well in that case we can move forward. We were all worried you were going to preclude us from doing that. The phony war continues, even in a field that women dominate from kindergarten on. There's just one aspect of it (literary fiction) where men hold an edge and immediately the alarms go off over how women are being oppressed. The proof; they dominate every other aspect of it, so there must be oppression or else they would dominate all of it. Your proof contradicts your whole phony gripe.

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Grace — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 14:05:57 -0000

And is she talking about women's magazines or literary magazines? Last I read, most women's work in literary magazines (the subject of VIDA's Count) is not about marriage-sex-divorce-childcare.

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Grace — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 13:58:08 -0000

I know. That part bothered me, too. She implies it's "depressing" that women write about marriage-sex-divorce, and would be less depressing if they wrote about something else. This seems to be a pot-shot at women who write these topics and not at publishers. I don't know where she gets her very subjective "statistic" either: "*Frequently* you'll find the *only* articles written by women are about..."

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Drew Patrick Smith — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 13:06:48 -0000

I feel like what the VIDA numbers and Crispin is trying to get at is the whole glass ceiling problem that essentially amounts to men always getting more than women in any business. Getting published is simply the writing glass ceiling - as well as that pesky more male editors at the top, more female editors as assistants.

If you look at the numbers in the majority of job categories, men make more money in the same positions, men tend to get promoted faster, and men are less likely to be terminated during layoffs. Study after study has shown this. One study can be wrong - multiple studies over a long period of time cannot.

I think it's been the hope of artists for a long time that creative fields buck these trends - that innate talent is what causes sucess, but that's not the case. There's still a system in place, and our culture still skews towards the male end of the spectrum.

And this is coming from a male.

More thoughts on the blog: http://www.pfspublishing.com/w....

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

John Nelson Leith — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 15:37:27 -0000

Anytime you find disparities in representation without demonstrating a mechanism of unjust exclusion or discrimination, attempting to address it as a problem in need of solution amounts a quota, whether we want to call it that or not.

Moreover, the assumption that there's something in need of fixing any time general demographic ratios fail to materialize in specific situations is itself an irrational, politically motivated prejudice. Imagine someone wringing their hands over the fact that representation in motherhood is 100 percent skewed to one gender over the other. Sexual differentiation goes beyond sex itself: men and women have social and cognitive differences as biologically real as the fact that women have wombs and men don't.

Over 90 percent of workplace fatalities are men and, despite the fact that losing one's life is far more significant than failing to get a short story published, I would be the first to say that most of that 9-to-1 disparity is probably explained by the different decisions men and women make based on the gendered chemistry of their brains rather than by cultural biases that merit corrective action.

Seeking a 50/50 split in every role simply guarantees a quota-driven dilution of quality, sometimes promoting undeserving men, sometimes undeserving women. How about we focus on promoting good writing, and leave the investigation of gender distinctions to peer-reviewed science?

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Emily — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 01:24:03 -0000

I don't think anyone's claiming victimhood, necessarily, here, though. People are looking into an imbalance and trying to find out reasons why this is the case. Maybe you're just trolling here, but why is it so threatening that people are even looking at these statistics and trying to find out the reasons for them? The fact that fewer boys than girls enter college English and writing programs is itself interesting and worthy of discussion, and I certainly wouldn't preclude anyone from doing so. There are, in fact, currently lots of educators troubled by the fact that many boys seem less interested in reading than girls are, and trying to find ways to address that problem.

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Brian D. Meeks — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 20:15:14 -0000

I found the article really interesting. Here are my unscientific and a anecdotal thoughts.

Perhaps it is the process which differs between men and women?

Again, I don't have data, but I have a female friend, who writes. We have known one another for about a year and were both starting books. She carefully crafts each sentence, laboring over every word choice. When she is done, her chapters are wonderful. She has added maybe 20K words over the last year.

I write every day, 365 days/year. I have completed the detective story I was working on when we met, started and completed (70K words), the follow up, and tomorrow will start the 3rd. I have also written another 200K words worth of blog posts. I even have a publisher for the first.

We both put up our writing on our blogs. Me daily, her once per week. If I were to objectively analyze our writing, I would conclude hers is of a higher quality. A much higher quality. In fact, I would need to stand on a ladder to reach her. (She is cute, so it might be worth the risk. I digress)

Which makes me wonder aloud (or in type as the case may be), Perhaps the quality of the work, on the whole, of the women is better?

Isn't one Harper Lee worth 100 novels by lesser men?

In reading your article, it doesn't appear that there are great barriers to entry, for the women writers. Those you spoke with, seem to have a desire for more women. If there were road blocks, then they should be addressed. If it is simply a matter of quality vs. quantity, then I am not sure if it makes sense to ask my friend to be average, but produce more, just to balance the scale. I am more than happy writing average stuff and she could only be happy, being brilliant.

So those are my thoughts, adeled as they might be, but I hope it adds to the discusison.

Sincerely,

Brian Meeks
http://extremelyaverage.com

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

guest — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 19:54:47 -0000

Ok, you question that and I'll delve into how unfair it is that;

"There tend, these days, to be substantially more women than men entering English and creative writing programs."

Deal? Then you we both get to drug ourselves with pseudo-indignation/victimhood.

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Guest — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 19:45:42 -0000

So what if women want to write about mostly marriage-sex-divorce? There's something for everyone. We need different subjects and one is not more important than the other.

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Emily — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:32:14 -0000

Whose decades-long fantasy? Studies have long shown that women read more fiction and buy books more often than men. There tend, these days, to be substantially more women than men entering English and creative writing programs. So when a study shows that just about every literary magazine in the U.S. publishes far more creative work and book reviews by men than by women, shouldn't we at least ask questions as to why that might be the case?

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Emily — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:11:17 -0000

I've been eagerly following the response to the Vida statistics, which depressed but did not entirely surprise me. Nor am I entirely surprised to hear Wiman's comment that submissions from men tend to outnumber submissions from women--as I do think it's probably true that women are less likely to submit work out of a fear of failure, which just underlines what a thorny and difficult problem the statistics present.

I really appreciate the thoughtful response to the statistics here and on Bookslut. The Vida statistics have provoked a lot of questions, for me, and I hope that people continue to talk about them. For one thing, I've been curious about whether and to what degree age plays a role in this. Is the gender (im)balance for younger writers/reviewers the same as it is for older writers/reviewers? If not, is there a possibility that the situation could change in the future?

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Stevjohnson30 — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:05:39 -0000

"Men send their material to magazines more frequently than women."

Leave at that and get over your tired, decades-long fantasy that life is unfair to you. YAWN.

"Poetry almost reaches equity in the Vida pie charts, and in the category “Authors Reviewed,” women outnumber men (by two)."

OH MY GOD!! That's so unfair to men. Where is your article about that grave injustice?

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

Sarah Norman — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:30:52 -0000

Very interesting! Thanks for the in-depth thoughts. Those pie charts were horrifying. I had to put them on my blog, my twitter, my facebook, my everything. Perhaps I am naive, but I found them really surprising.

www.booksof2010.blogspot.com

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

anon — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:54:09 -0000

just a note - the link to the The Chicagoan goes to the website of an apartment building.

Re: ‘Numbers don’t lie’: Addressing the gender gap in literary publishing

guest — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:03:30 -0000

Is there a gender gap even now?
We see more and more women entering education, entertainment, and entrepreneurial areas. Many educated women have already entered Executive, Legal, and Administrative Fields. Some are active in Politics and holding challenging positions like Governor, Supreme Court Judge, Secretary of State, Attorney General, etc... Some women have taken up high stress jobs such as Critical Care Nurses, Police Officers, Firefighers.
Education makes all the differences.