Last week I wrote a post about two major Literary Clubs (in London and NYC) discussing if women should or should not be allowed to become members. In closing, I said “That this issue is still up for debate and that there are men who oppose it, says enough about the networking opportunities they would like to afford their female peers and the intellectual respect they have for them. Not to mention the most glaring fact: their views on gender equality”.
Well, today I came across the cold, hard figures that illustrate the real state of gender equality in literature. Vida, a Non Profit devoted to exploring critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women released The Count 2010, that is, the number of women vs. men in all major literary magazines and journals.
Some of the figures (although, the article at Vida is much more explanatory, as it includes the graphics that go with this data):
- The New York Review of Books has 462 male bylines to 79 female, about a 6-to-1 ratio.
- The New Republic has 32 women vs 160 men.
- The Atlantic published 154 male authors vs 55 women.
- The New Yorker reviewed 36 books by men and 9 by women.
- Harper’s reviewed more than twice as many books by men as by women.
- The New York Times Book Review had 1.5 men to 1 woman (438 compared to 295) and an authors-reviewed ratio of 1.9 to 1 (524 compared to 283).
I am convinced that last week’s story about women writers not allowed into men’s clubs and the publishing figures compiled by Vida are strongly interrelated. It’s a matter of both physical and printed spaces being kept restricted. As long as women’s voices are considered less than, I guess we will continue seeing gender issues downplayed in media. And we know who has the most to lose then.
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