1. 23.5%
I’ve done the math and it turns out that I’m part of the problem. That’s an awful realization. I can’t even tell you how heartbroken I am.
Since 2009, the grassroots organization VIDA: Women in Literary Arts has taken on the enormous task of addressing the deep-rooted and endemic sexism in the publishing world. Its primary goal is to “explore critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women through meaningful conversation and the exchange of ideas among existing and emerging literary communities,” and it does great work.
VIDA is best known, I think, for its blistering annual report, called simply “the Count.” The Count looks at the gender disparities in some of our better-known periodicals, and the 2012 edition is discouraging to say the least. Instead of cherry picking some convenient statistics from the Count to cite here in support of some argument, or make myself look good, I’ll simply share the numbers for the four publications they analyze and which I currently subscribe to.
In 2012:
- Harper’s reviewed 54 books by men and 11 by women (17%)
- The New Yorker reviewed 583 by men and 218 by women (27%)
- New York Review of Books reviewed 316 by men and 89 by women (22%)
- New York Times Book Review reviewed 488 by men and 237 by women (33%)
These statistics are sobering. They’re also indictments—calls for those of us who review books to look at our own habits, biases, and presumptions. Inspired by the 2012 edition of The Count, I went back and looked at my own history as a book critic, and what I found was tremendously embarrassing. I was both surprised and mortified by what I discovered.
Since 1996, I have reviewed 280 books for various publications.[1] The complete list can be found at my web site.[2] I’m ashamed to say that of those 280, only 66 were written or edited by women. That’s a dismal 23.5%.
And it gets worse, simply because I should know better.
Before doing this self-evaluation, I would have said that I’m a champion of and activist for literature by women. I’ve successfully pitched and written up radical books like Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine and From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism by Patricia Hill Collins. I graduated from a college that went co-ed shortly before I arrived and which maintains a proud, feminist tradition. I love the fact that my undergrad degree in philosophy and religion was so steeped in feminist thought, and I continue to reread (and, now, teach) essays like Linda Nochlin’s classic “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” I’ve written a fair amount about my own white, male privileges.[3] My wife’s doctoral dissertation was on women composers and their lack of representation on concert programs, for crying out loud. I’m someone who gets it—or so I thought. The glaring distinction between my (deluded, as it turns out) self-image as a progressive, pro-feminist critic and the reality of my track record is extremely upsetting.
The big question I face now is: What can I do to change this? I don’t want to be part of the problem any longer.
Again, the VIDA report raises two separate concerns: (1) the number of book reviews written by women, and (2) the number of books written by women that get reviewed. In my own writing life, I plan to address both of these. Please understand that I’m not out to tell anyone else what to do. Every critic and book-review editor and publisher has to remain true to his or her own vision.[4] My concern here is the personal responsibility I feel.
2. The Number of Book Reviews Written by Women
It would appear, on the surface, that the number of book reviews written by women is beyond my immediate control. Sure, I understand that every review I write will take precious and steadily diminishing review space away from a woman who could have contributed, but I’m not going to stop reviewing books in the hope that my assigning editors will hire more women. I wish they would hire more women, of course, but I plan to keep reviewing books too. One terrific potential consequence of the VIDA report, I hope, is that it will encourage every editor who assigns review coverage to split the review assignments equally among women and men. Were that to happen, it would present me with fewer opportunities to review books in print, which on one hand would be disappointing and financially problematic, but it would also provide me with more new voices to read, and I love the sound of that. A healthier literary community is good for everybody, even if it costs critics like me a bit of work and a few bucks.
I’ve also recently accepted the position of contributing editor at the new Philadelphia Review of Books. I don’t have a firm job description or much authority or anything like that, and it’s unpaid, but I will attempt to use that platform to assign more reviews to women writers.
3. The Number of Books Written by Women that Get Reviewed
Although I don’t review nearly as many books as I used to, this is where I can make an immediate impact. My book-review assignments come two ways: either a book-review editor suggests a title, or I find a book that appeals to me and I pitch around a review.
When an editor does contact me about reviewing a book, I almost always say yes. It’s very rare that I turn down paying work.[5] Historically, I have had little say in what books my editors have asked me to review. The vast majority of the time, I’m asked to review books written by men, but I can certainly better communicate with my editors about my preferences and about my desire to review more books by women. I once did just that with a now-departed book review editor at the Believer, but even then, for some reason, it took months for the two of us to come up with a good assignment. It ended up being a review of Anne Carson’s Nox.[6]
When I find a book that appeals to me, I like to pitch it around to a few different book-review editors. That’s precisely how I now plan to address the gender disparity in my own reviewing record. Thanks to the wake-up call of the VIDA report, I will actively look for and pitch more reviews of books by women. It is a responsibility I’m glad to take on, even if I’m doing so a bit too far along in my career.[7] I can’t guarantee that my newspaper editors will accept more pitches for reviews of books by women, but I will certainly try harder to bring worthy titles to their attention.
4. Looking Forward
One last sticking point comes to mind, and I really don’t know what to do with this. It’s fairly obvious, or it should be, that treating a person differently because of her gender is sexist and offensive. What I’m proposing to do here in attending to authors’ genders strikes me as slightly disconcerting. I don’t want to treat books by women differently than I do books by men. Maybe that’s naïve. Something has to change, right? I have to change. Is there such thing as benign sexism? I wish our society didn’t have a need for affirmative action, but it does and will continue to do so until things improve and there’s genuine equality.
What I’ve come to realize, thanks to VIDA and the Count, is that my feminist convictions do not make up for the low number of books by women I’ve reviewed. Not yet. Good intentions are not enough. It’s people like me, people aware of the persistent sexism of our society, who need to do a better job of promoting books by women. To ignore the gender disparity in publishing is to perpetuate it. I can’t do that any longer. Instead, I will continue to champion all of the books I love in every way I can—only now I will do so with a clearer understanding of just how far we still have to go in building the literary community that we all deserve.
***
[1] This number includes one review that has been submitted but not yet published.
[2] andrewervin.com/book-reviews
[3] http://quarterlyconversation.com/white-privilege-and-responsibility-reading-wallace-shawns-essays
[4] I’m aware that I’m oversimplifying this. In addition to their own consciences, publishers and editors are responsible to advertisers and to the reading public. If we all demand more literary fiction by women, for instance, and do so with our wallets, I’m confident that more will get published. The responsibilities of publishers and book-review editors and book critics and readers are ultimately inseparable, but change has to start somewhere.
[5] There are some exceptions. I won’t review books by people I know, obviously. And if the book ends up being terrible, I will often speak with my editor and try to bail on the assignment. At this point in my life, I’d rather give up the paycheck than spend my time and energy on a book I don’t like.
[6] http://www.believermag.com/issues/201009/?read=review_ervin
[7] Publishers large and small also bear some responsibility to usher more literature by women into the world and to properly promote it, but I’m not trying to pass that particular buck at the moment and I’m far more interested here in my own responsibilities.
***
Charts © 2013 by VIDA.
24 responses
I’m not sure anymore where I heard this story, but hear it I did, and for me it’s iconic. Not so long ago there were few women musicians in major symphony orchestras. Some people began to notice. Why was this? Were women just not good enough? That didn’t seem quite right–but women were given equal opportunities to compete in the auditions, and many did compete. But very few women were selected, so perhaps it was indeed something about quality. Then someone had a great idea: Auditions would henceforth be blind, that is the auditioning performer would play from behind a screen so that the judges would be forced, as it were, to make selections based solely on the musicality of the performance. And, Lo!, suddenly more and more women were winning. I mean immediately. Sexism does run deep. I wonder the feasibility of selecting books for review without the names of authors. More new authors and more women authors might make well the cut. Now for an aside: a national organization of mystery writers to which I belong, Sisters in Crime, does similar annual counts, including both reviews and who gets premium space on bookstore shelves. Their results are equally as dismal as those you cite.
The gender ratio of reviewed authors can fairly match only the gender ratio of published authors. You didn’t address this idea in your article.
Is it possible that the number of quality books available for review are roughly 75% written by men? If editors assign a quality book at random, or if you decide to review a quality book at random, then the chance that that book is written by a man could be 75% if the pool of available, published books is already biased at 75-25.
If this ratio is currently 50-50, then the assignment editors may, in fact, be biased. If editors are drawing from a pool of published material that is already biased, then trying to bring the gender ratio to 50-50 would actually bias it in favor of females. So some background research is necessary before you jump to a conclusion and take action.
If the gender ratio of authors of quality published books is not 50-50, then this is a separate issue . Maybe you should focus your efforts to establish the legitimacy of this, more fundamental issue, instead of the reviews.
Another way to gauge the inequitable distribution of reviews of the works by women versus the works by men might be to determine the total number of books/articles written by women versus by men and compare the percentage of reviews to the totals done by each. This may further incriminate the sexism exposed by VIDA.
“Is it possible that the number of quality books available for review are roughly 75% written by men?”
Setting aside the fact that there’s no objective definition for “quality” as it’s used here, I still think it’s unlikely.
“If editors are drawing from a pool of published material that is already biased, then trying to bring the gender ratio to 50-50 would actually bias it in favor of females.”
Women have been at a disadvantage in terms of getting their books published for as long as there’s been a publishing industry. It’s still the case. Leveling the field in terms of reviews is one way, though not the only way, of helping address this imbalance.
“So some background research is necessary before you jump to a conclusion and take action.”
You’re acting like this is the first time anyone has ever talked about this subject. You might want to do a little research on the subject before jumping into a conversation that’s been going on for years.
Brian said what I was gonna say. Anyone who wants to know more about where VIDA is coming from should visit their website. There’s lots of stuff to read there that should answer the questions posed above. The theory of well, maybe men are the only ones writing quality work has been addressed.
“What I’m proposing to do here in attending to authors’ genders strikes me as slightly disconcerting. I don’t want to treat books by women differently than I do books by men.”
I think this is interesting, and speaks to certain unconscious biases (that we all have, I don’t mean to pick on Andrew Ervin). Publishers, editors, and reviewers are de facto already treating writing by men and women differently, in that they are overwhelmingly publishing and reviewing male writers. But because the world is set up the way it is, this is “normal.” There’s no awareness of bias, because this particular bias is the status quo. It is so much status quo, in fact, that when we talk about correcting this bias, by publishing more women, by actively seeking out books by women, this correction of the original bias is in fact seen as bias (kind of makes your head explode, doesn’t it?). This is the same bias that makes us think of books by men as “literature,” while books by women are “women’s literature.” Part of the persistence of this bias is its ability to convince us that it doesn’t exist, because it masks the default male norm.
That said, I’m thrilled that this year’s VIDA count is generating so much discussion. Becoming aware of these issues, and choosing to address them, will (I fervently hope) go a long way toward me getting to read a lot more work by fantastic female writers.
All I’m saying is that serious work (based on the scientific method and correct statistical analysis) needs to be done before an indictment is made. Just because there’s been a perceived problem for a long time doesn’t mean that there actually is a problem. Here are two questions that need to be answered before one can cry sexism:
1) To better understand the byline bias, what is the M/F ratio of people submitting work?
2) To better understand the authors reviewed bias, what is the mean weighted M/F ratio of authors published by the publishing houses represented in the VIDA study? For example, if, say, Basic Books published 3% of the total books reviewed encompassing the VIDA study, then the M/F ratio of authors published by Basic Books’ should get weighed in at 3%. (I’d include “books typically reviewed,” not cookbooks or genre fiction, etc.)
I read many of the comments at VIDA’s post about their study here: http://www.vidaweb.org/the-count-2012.
Many of the commentators ask similar questions to my own, including one editor who admitted that men submit far more frequently than women. I, myself, find this submission bias hard to believe, because there appears to be a majority of women who are interested in writing and reading; but perhaps the professional writers, the ones who actually write the reviews and the articles, happen to be mostly men. I don’t know. But if there are more professional male writers than women writers, then so what? Why is this a problem? It is what it is. There are plenty of professions that are biased. Most teachers are women. Most speech therapists are women. Most physicists are men … maybe most professional writers are men. Has anyone done the research necessary to know for sure?
I’m asking these questions as an unbiased scientist, by training.
Howard Goldowsky:
You have stated that as “an unbiased scientist, by training” you believe that applying the scientific method and “correct” statistical analysis is the best way to approach this data. However, given your term “serious work” and “before an indictment can be made” betray your own bias. Let me explain: It takes hundreds of hours to collect these data every year. Seriously. The data collection is done without pay by professional writers (most of whom are female I believe.) In the three years that The Count has appeared, the amount and breadth of collected data has increased, as have the analytic techniques used to interpret them.
As a social scientist by training, as well as a professional writer, I’m well aware that more advanced statistical techniques *could* be used, however I am not convinced that the conclusions (which is the proper scientific word for “indictment”) would be any more convincing than what we have been seeing year after year. And this year, our volunteer social scientists at VIDA have highlighted longer term trends as well as annual data.
As the former managing editor of a literary magazine, I, too, can tell you that male writers not only submit more frequently than women, but they simultaneously submit to more literary magazines than do women. This is, of course, their right. It is what it is.
Perhaps next year you might volunteer some of your time and expertise in the scientific method and statistical analysis to VIDA’s next Count. One development I’ve begun to see is that more and more men are becoming aware of the disparity and are taking the risk, as you’ve done, of joining the conversation. I’m glad for this.
Howard,
I’m also a scientist by training. I totally got a perfect score AND all the extra credit on my 8th grade Earth Science final exam (at an elite private prep school no less).
So, as an unbiased scientist by training, I am confident in saying you are talking out of your ass.
P.S. Statistics isn’t science.
P.P.S. Keep your privilege off my VIDA.
Andrew, as a writer, I can only tell you that the clarity and humility you show here is what writers long for in reviewers.
Also, Howard…
I think you didn’t get trained as well as I did. Let me guess, you missed some of the extra credit questions on your final. It’s okay, it happens to the best of us.
But you clearly don’t understand the scientific method, or you wouldn’t yammer on about serious work and SCIENCE!
Last I checked the steps (it’s a methodology, remember?) of the scientific method were…
1. Observe phenomenon
2. Formulate hypothesis
3. Test Hypothesis
4. Analyze Data
5. Accept or Reject the Hypothesis
6. Communicate findings
So…yeah…maybe you should train harder.
Dia,
What, exactly, is your point? What, exactly, am I saying that is not legit? And I never said statistics is science; but I did imply that good scientists use good statistics.
I am not privileged. I am trying to just bring up points that the author of this article may not have considered.
Women are legitimately underrepresented in many lines of work. That gives women the right to investigate potential gender bias when they suspect it. But it does not give women the right to simply assume gender bias exists without the proper investigations. I’m merely questioning whether or not these investigations have been made. VIDA seems on track, but let’s not (excuse my cliche in this literary forum) put the cart before the horse.
And I apologize for any “loaded words” I may have used. But loaded words fall under their weight when hit by hard stats.
Howard
Dia,
IN my opinion, we’re at step 4 in your chart. We have not yet analyzed the data correctly. What more is there to say?
Howard
Dia,
I guess in my opinion the author of this piece (and VIDA) has naively analyzed the data and accepted their hypothesis prematurely. Again, what more is there to say?
Howard
Howard: I’m glad that an unbiased man is here to tell all of us silly, bias-prone women that we’re wrong. So good of you to set us on the path towards truth and wisdom. We really should leave that science stuff to you men. We’re just so biased and mistake-prone! What ever would we do?!
Well, for those interested, here’s one small attempt to address the “what’s the M/F ratio of books getting published” question: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/13/book-gender_n_1324560.html It does and does not support the 75/25 split. Not that simple publication stats say it all either, not with 300,000+ books published last year in the US (that’s including, says Bowker, all comers–businesses plus self-published). Which books get sent off to reviewers is another interesting question. And there’s also the question of who gets agented, and the relative difficulty for male vs female writers of getting through that narrowing gate. I’m still betting that publication is marginally easier for women who use male pseudonyms than for women who proudly use their own (female) names. And I still think that gender-blind submission (use first initials only) is the only way to see change.
Linda,
Thanks for the link. This isn’t the weighted percentage I referred to above, but it’s an approximation with which to begin a discussion. If you add up all the books published by these four major publishers, the M/F ratio comes out to 68.3%. So, these numbers leave open the possibility that gender bias may originate at the publishers, not the magazines that review the books. The magazines’ reviews appear to mirror, on average, the gender ratio they receive “upstream.”
Now, the next questions I would ask is why the major publishers publish more women than men. Is there a bias? Do more men write professionally than women? Do more men write the type of literary fiction and non-fiction that get reviewed? I have no idea about these questions, but they are interesting questions.
If there is a bias, it could be as simple as there being more male editors at the large publishing houses, and the male editors just prefer male writers. What is the M/F ratio of editors at these big houses? If there is a 50-50 gender split of editors, then it would mean that female editors are preferring male writers! If it is not a 50-50 split, then maybe the next step is to investigate. That would make a fascinating article.
Howard
On a positive note, this means women can duck the majority of responsibility for the dull, boring and generally dead prose shoveled out by many of the publications indicated.
I think this is a great – and honest – response to the VIDA numbers. I’ve been trying – subversively, mostly – to review books mainly by women in the publications I write for. I do fall in love, as a reviewer with books by men – Jericho Brown, Eduardo C. Corral, Ilya Kaminsky, Saeed Jones and Gregory Sherl, for example – but I try to review and bring attention to books by women. Because even my well-read, female writer friends, when I talk about women poets, will respond by saying “Who? I’ve never heard of her.” And these are usually female poets with oh, five to ten books out. My own personal bias is towards speculative writing by women – my heroes include Matthea Harvey and Margaret Atwood – but I try to read outside of my comfort zone – and I think that’s a responsibility for all good ethical reviewers.
Another thing you mention is that when you pitch reviews, often only reviews by men get taken. That has been true in my experience as well – I have to pitch twice as many places for twice as long to place reviews of female-written poetry books. It’s a shame. But I will continue to do it.
Andrew, thanks for making your realization and dedicating yourself to making a change. You have the opportunity to help level the playing field for female authors, which is fantastic.
Howard – regarding the following comment:
“But if there are more professional male writers than women writers, then so what? Why is this a problem? It is what it is. There are plenty of professions that are biased. Most teachers are women. Most speech therapists are women. Most physicists are men … maybe most professional writers are men.”
Yes, many professions are dominated by one sex. That’s actually a huge problem that happens because of sexism and it perpetuates sexism further. Remember the “Friends” episode in which a male nanny was hired, and then ridiculed for being too good at his job (and therefore too feminine), and then fired? Yeah, that’s sexism. It turns out that female-dominated lines of work become devalued – if a woman can do it, why would a man stoop to her level? And male-dominated workplaces make a major contribution to rape culture, because they don’t have much incentive to understand or work with women as equals.
The Atlantic recently published an article on that subject:
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/the-problem-with-mostly-male-and-mostly-female-workplaces/274208/
Also, you mentioned physicists. I’m not sure whether you’ve bought into the misconception that men are “better” at science, but there are many other reasons that women haven’t yet attained equality in that arena. (Hell, we’ve only begun to have equal access to decent education in the last half-century.) Nature magazine is running a special feature about that right now. I haven’t read it, but you might want to check it out: http://www.nature.com/news/specials/women/index.html.
Natasha,
When it comes to feminist issues, I try to listen attentively and read articles like the one you linked to in the Atlantic. But I tend to side with thinkers like Nassim Taleb (“Fooled By Randomness,” “The Black Swan,” “Antifragile”), who believe that the world is a complex place. In other words, I don’t just take it for granted that gender equality in professions is bad or leads to cultural problems.
At the end of the Atlantic article, Philip Cohen more or less explains his thought process. He writes: “Is tying this to Steubenville and military rape a stretch? Yes. And stretching is how we try to understand complex things like ‘culture.’”
This last sentence Taleb would disagree with and so do I. “Stretching” is not how scientists do science. “Stretching” is what the media does when they must explain every blip and dip of the stock market with a piece of news. “Stretching” is confusing causation for mere correlation in a complex dynamic system. (Read Nate Silver’s fascinating new book, “The Signal and the Noise,” for more info about this.) “Stretching” is what people without a scientific background do to explain phenomenon they don’t understand.
There are some things in this world we just don’t understand, may never understand, or may need six hundred years to understand.
Patience, curiosity, and compassion solve a lot of problems.
Whenever I publicly proclaim skepticism I come across as biased, especially to feminist. This I am not. I merely examine feminism the way I like to examine all issues I don’t yet understand, from a broad perspective. And I don’t get how feminists can be so confident and sure they’re “right” about their ideas, when much of social science is just so complex and poorly understood.
Anyway, I hope you understand where I’m coming from. I read your links, but I don’t necessarily find them convincing. Please take a moment to sample the writing I mention, if you wish.
I meant to write “…I don’t just take it for granted that gender inequality in professions is bad or leads to cultural problems.” Instead I mistakenly wrote “gender equality.”
I get what VIDA is trying to do, and their MISSION is fine, but the method is so completely flawed. By targeting specific publications/editors, they are forcing them to start being sexist when they pick what to review/publish. Every book, essay, short story, review, etc. should be based on merit alone. If you start saying, “This story is great, but a man wrote it, so let’s pass on it to see if we can find a great story by a woman,” you ARE BEING SEXIST. VIDA is pressuring publications to do just this, and it is absolutely the wrong way to go about it.
If the 2013 count shows that more women are being reviewed and published, I guess VIDA can think they won, but the publications AND readers lost, because what is being printed will probably have lower standards. As a woman, I’d MUCH rather read a magazine with all male stories if the stories are all great then read one with half male, half female if the female stories aren’t as strong. (Obviously men are not inherently better writers — I mean that if good male stories are not printed to make room for less strong stories by females, just so the quote is reached.)
This is a deeper issue that needs to be addressed in other ways, maybe with the education system? I HIGHLY doubt that the editors working at The New Yorker, NYT, Tin House, etc. are sexist and are PURPOSELY not printing more females. Let’s stop wasting time attacking them and get to the root of the issue of gender inequality in literature!
Sigh. How do you base on merit alone? What do you mean, exactly, when you define merit as it refers to writing? Is there some objective scale you have access to?
But more importantly, in the case of many of the journals and magazines that VIDA counts, we’re not talking about publications that come from slush piles most of the time. We’re talking about places that solicit work. So where then does your argument go if, say, 90% of the stuff the New Yorker publishes is solicited and yet their gender numbers are still ridiculously skewed? Doesn’t that suggest that there’s a bias, conscious or unconscious, toward men on the part of the people who are asking people for work?
This isn’t difficult to fix, really, if you’re an editor. You just have to care enough to look at who you ask for work. It’s not like there’s a dearth of incredibly talented women writers out there. Men aren’t naturally better at this or anything. They’ve just traditionally had a leg up on the women who are doing the same work, and that’s what VIDA is trying to point out, that even today, there’s a bias toward male writers.
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