The under-representation of women in literary publications

The latest statistics published by VIDA have re-sparked debates in the blogosphere on the under-representation of women in literary publications. The statistics, covering a variety of famous publications, such as The New Yorker and TLS, cover, depending on the publication, the gender of the book reviewers as well as the gender of the authors of books reviews. The results reveal that, for instance, TLS’ reviewers have been staggeringly male with 900 men to 341 women. On the subject, Peter Stothard, editor of TLS has commented:

"I’m not too appalled by our figure, as I’d be very surprised if the authorship of published books was 50/50. And while women are heavy readers, we know they are heavy readers of the kind of fiction that is not likely to be reviewed in the pages of the TLS. The TLS is only interested in getting the best reviews of the most important books."

This is the kind of comment Stothard is bound to regret with Magma already taking him to task on the subject. More importantly, can we simplify the under-representation by blaming it on women’s double lives as carers, mothers, home-makers? Is it just that women, as Angela Readman suggests in the comments, are less keen to face the firing squad that comes with the reviewing package? Tin House further muddies the water by demonstrating that women writers are less likely to re-submit than men. I am inclined to side with Magma’s Rob Mackenzie in believing that the gender divide is more balanced in smaller publications. However, doing so suggests either shyness when it comes to approaching larger publications or, a male bias when it comes to selecting pieces and reviewers. Neither of these feels quite satisfactory an explanation.

My experience with Sabotage, a website reviewing poetry pamphlets, novellas and literary magazines, has been quite different. The majority of Sabotage reviewers are female, therefore bucking the supposed trend. There is no malice to this trend, these are the reviewers who have volunteered to write for me. In light of these statistics I have been trying to puzzle out why this is the case, and I think that publicizing these opportunities has been key. I am very open about opportunities to review both on Twitter and Facebook. There is no clique, you don’t need to be in the ‘know’ to be able to review. If larger publications want to redress the balance and feature more female reviewers, they could start by being more open about their reviewing opportunities.