2014 Gender Audit

So yes a little late considering that we are midway through January.  (The inspiration for Gender audits can be found here.)

However here are the results. 

Note these figures are based entirely on books received for review and don’t include any reading done for Aurealis.  I haven’t included anthologies with more than two authors in the count (this rules out two anthologies that were mostly, if not solely female). 

So, total number of books read excluding these anthologies is 53.  Where books featured a male and female author I have awarded a tally to each (there were two volumes with mixed authorship so I tallied one book for each gender).

Female Authors Read = 24

Male Authors Read = 29

 

Hmmm so much for my target of 60/40 female to male reading. I realised upon compiling this audit that I hadn’t done one for the end of 2013 either.  So applying the same rules as per anthologies…last year was much better.

 

In 2012 I included mixed works in the final graph but as you can see there appears to have been a steady decline from 60% in 2012 to 44% female authors read in 2014. 

 

There are a number of factors that probably feed into the results this year.  I read a number of nonfiction books in 2014 and if you exclude poetry, all the non-fiction books were authored by men. I admit aside from the Australian Women Writers Challenge I have not had a deliberate focus on women ie I have not sat down and considered whether or not I should read a book based on gender.

Perhaps that is a requirement if I want to hit that 60/40 target.  The results confirm my suspicions that without a deliberate, structured approach to redressing a reading imbalance I will tend to read more men.

 

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Gender Bias in Publishing? Not us says Allen and Unwin

 

So apparently Allen and Unwin got a bit of stick for their advertising this year in regard to gender bias.  Well according to the self described rant at Things Made From Letters.  The post troubles me for a number of reasons.  And strikes me as another post from a publishing house (or publishing house insiders)  that’s less than professional or perhaps a little unwise.  I did a search for criticism and found nothing on Google, nor Twitter. If you can find what The Onions at Things Made from Letters were talking about in regard to criticism then let me know.

Anyway here is the advert, or one that may have caused the issue.  You will notice not one book by a woman.  So how do our Onions(and at this point I did wonder Onions—> Onion –> Satire) respond to this charge?  With a calm explanation of the process that led to the claim?  Well let’s see.

We’ve recently been taken to task for showing gender bias in some of our advertising. If it weren’t so funny it would be kind of sad.

Oh dear.  Interesting way of opening; casting disparaging comments about your critics as if there were no issue (one could argue that this tone begins with the title but I’ll pretend that the question was asked with sincerity.  We’ll move on shall we?

When we prepared our Christmas publishing program this year, and the promotion schedule to support it, never did it occur to any of us that it favoured male writers or subjects. The really silly thing is, if we’d undertaken a similar campaign last year the so-called bias would have had women writers and subjects holding the balance.

This paragraph says volumes ( and again I look over my shoulder and wonder if I am being poe’d.)  The bit that I think is most enlightening is never did it occur to any of us that it favoured male writers or subjects. Indicating that there’s no belief nor understanding that humans no matter how smart, liberal, or educated are subject to biases and that a raft of these are subconscious or implicit. Indicating that Allen and Unwin don’t have anything in place to try and screen or at least get them to reflect on possible biases they might have on an individual level or as an institution.

Then there’s another attempt to ridicule their detractors.  They are not just funny this time but silly ie The really silly thing is. If I was being really hard core I’d even suggest that the use of silly as a descriptor is gendered, as in silly girls.  But not knowing the gender of those who complained we’ll let that slide.

The rest of the paragraph implies a point without directly making it.  That the gender of writers published each year is dependant on the books that they receive or that sell well and that “if we’d undertaken a similar campaign last year the so-called bias would have had women writers and subjects holding the balance.”  Note the use of so-called (methinks they are pretty sure they aren’t biased) but note also the if.  If they had done it last year the situation would have been reversed.

If you had, Allen and Unwin, but you didn’t and so the point is moot.  What would have been better here is some stats and a look at what actually was run as the campaign last year.  Less of the dismissive “down your nose” attitude that, dare I say, might lead detractors to think you really don’t think there is a problem.

To say that gender doesn’t enter our thinking about anything here at Allen & Unwin is a serious understatement. We are a company overrun by women. Of the senior management team only 10% are men.

Not sure what this is meant to suggest.  That women can’t have biases against women (nor against certain genres now that we are thinking about it) that we don’t absorb attitudes to others from the culture we grow up in? 

Allen & Unwin does not take on a book simply because it’s by a man. Neither do we consider one book over another because the gender balance needs to be redressed. We take on a book because of the quality of the writing. Period.

I would hope they don't take a book on because of the author’s gender and I think those days are long gone ie blatant sexism.  But “The Onions” have already indicated that at Allen and Unwin there’s no concept of implicit or subconscious bias. 

I would hope that they take on a book because of its quality, marketability or both.  I want A&U to make money so they can keep publishing some of my favourite writers.  I note the veiled dig at tokenism with comments about redressing the balance.  Thing is, if no one at A&U is contemplating whether or not, at any of the many doors a work has to pass through to get published, that there might be subconscious bias operating, then… well you are going to have your publishing skewed by bias, gender or otherwise.

Allen & Unwin has a long and proud tradition of publishing feminist polemics, humorous takes on the state of gender politics and of showcasing the writing of some of this country’s best writers: Michelle de Kretser, Kate Morton, Danielle Wood, Kerry Greenwood, Marion Halligan, Charlotte Wood, Kate Grenville, Maureen McCarthy, Ann Fienberg, Margot Lanagan, Kathryn Heyman, Marele Day to name but a few (and they’re just some of the novelists).

You’re  lucky you included Margo in that list.  But hey, this is more like it, here’s some evidence.  I’d still like to see some navel gazing, some contemplation about other issues raised.  There’s also the point that, presented in isolation, these names might be meaningless.  How many male novelists by comparison.  How many books by has-been sports stars?

Should further evidence be required, it bares pointing out that Allen & Unwin proudly and very successfully published Kerry-Anne Walsh’s Stalking of Julia Gillard earlier this year. Hardly the actions of a publisher with anti-female gender bias.

The further evidence required would be stats of books published over time and a thoughtful interrogation of these stats.  What we don’t need in this discussion is off the cuff defensive rants.  We need a serious investigation/consideration from the people who have the information ie publishers.  I note here  the phrase anti-female gender bias, which again belies the authors’ fixation on conscious or blatant bias.  It seems quite obvious to me, as they say in the the second paragraph… they never thought, because you can’t think about something you are not aware exists. I doubt there is a conscious anti-female gender bias at Allen and Unwin or any other publisher (though I have heard of some stories around gender and Science Fiction authors).  Here is where I think the article in all its misguided glory should have halted.

But no.

The last line is a doosie:

It shames us all that Australian culture and politics have driven some people to this kind of petty griping. Thoughts?

It shames us all?  What a distasteful start to a sentence, to group us all together, to attempt to “force team”* your reader into feeling shame.  And I don’t understand the slight against Australian Culture and politics.  Is it a swipe at the Julia Gillard’s standing up against blatant misogyny (surely not, for as they say they published the stalking of Julia Gillard)? Surely the fact that we are talking about gender bias is good?

Are we really all just jumping at shadows with petty gripping?  Were there no women published by Allen & Unwin in 2013 that could have been stuck on that banner? So hang on, lets see; funny, silly and petty. I get the feeling that A&U doesn’t think much of its detractors. 

My thoughts?

Funny as in odd, silly and petty- pretty much sums up what I think of the article.

If Allen and Unwin were really concerned about putting the claims of gender bias to bed, they’d take the issue seriously. They’d not throw a tanty.  I know Allen and Unwin publish female writers, all my Allen and Unwin books are by women authors.  Gender bias in publishing, reviewing and the wider culture is a serious and complex problem and one that not only publishers are responsible for addressing. 

The issue deserves more than this.

 

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* A concept taken from Gavin DeBecker’s A Gift of Fear – I bit of linguistic sleight of hand to imply that (in this case) the author and reader are part of the same group, share a predicament when that’s not the case.

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Interim Gender Audit October 2013

  I started doing gender audits of my reading in 2011 and have done one each year - see 2011, 2012.  My reasons for doing this can be found in my first post snipped below:

Some time in March¹ this year{2012] I did a gender audit of my reading.  I had been listening to those subversive women at Galactic Suburbia and I really wanted to see how I did. 

Now prior to conducting the audit I had a fairly high opinion of myself.  I have no obvert preferences for male writers over female, and I thought on the whole the gender split would probably be fairly close, say 60/40 in favour of men.

How

wrong

I

was.

As a feminist friendly male reader I had a gender split of 82/18.²  So I set about making a conscious effort to read female writers, especially for my recreational reading as opposed to my official reviewing.[read on]

Now I am doing this one early, mostly as a check on myself, as it’s been a busy year with work and a podcast to run. I have had to let some focus drop.  So without too much focus on what I am picking up to read, I wanted to see if other factors had skewed my reading in anyway.

So as of today the breakdowns are as follows with last years graph below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So you’ll note at this point that I have read more collections that feature a mix of genders and that the gender balance of Male and Female authors is more evenly split. I’d have to dig a bit deeper into the actual titles to examine the effect of say major publishing houses versus small publishers on that balance ie does more big publishing titles that I get for review skew the data towards more male authors read.

At this stage I am ok with the results, I like to aim for a 60/40 split in favour of female authors to help correct the situation that occurs in major reviewing publications.

I still had to perception though that I was reading far more female authors than I have. Interesting.

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2012 Gender Audit

This is the third gender audit I have done of my reading.  I last posted about it here.  You can see my reasons for establishing the audit and why I think its important for me personally.

Now, this year I partook in the Australian Women Writers challenge so I am hoping to have achieved much better results than last year.

Drumroll please.

The results are in

So yes, as expected the results are almost reversed compared to last year.  Still it shows that with a concentrated and structured effort to read women, there is still quite a strong presence from male authors in my reading.

It suggests to me that just intending to read more women, just being of the view that more women should be read isn’t really enough.  To overcome my own subconscious cultural reading bias, a blunt instrument is required.

I am happy with the 60/40 split and will aim to mirror it again in 2013.

2011

Other reflections

I have heard it said that in establishing a quota that quality will suffer.  This argument presumes that male authors somehow get the top of the field by virtue of merit alone, that women aren’t in best reading lists because they just aren’t good enough.  I personally think this line of reasoning displays a lack of understanding in human psychology but I’ll leave that point there.

In my sample size of “me” I have found that structured reading of women writers has resulted in no discernable drop in quality. Now of course being fully behind the concept of Australian Women Writers I can’t rule out a bias in favour of women writers but I think it more likely that there is a depth of quality in writing and that women writers of quality just need to be given “fair exposure” - I was going to say level playing field but its not really a competition, if we are looking for quality we should be trying to screen for gender bias, should be celebrating diversity.

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The Book Boys reinforcing gender stereotypes?

I had the great fortune, after dropping my wife off at Adelaide airport, to spend 3 hours scouring Adelaide for the rarest of elixirs – Infiniti Treadmill Lube.  Consequently I have become very familiar with most of Adelaide's greater metropolitan area.

But you were here for the gender commentary no?

Yes, well in my travels I happened to prevail upon a “Book Boys” discount store, sitting in the shell of an old Angus & Robertson.  Now I have picked up some real gems in these stores before, so aside from the usual allure of a brick and mortar store, my fingers started twitching at the possibility of a bargain.

Imagine my surprise upon entering the store and  being confronted with two discount tables labelled “Male Fiction” and “Female Fiction”, the later comprised of 90% romance books. 

Thankfully the “male” table featured some female authors, but I was astounded that the store would fall prey to blatant gender stereotyping.

I posted a message on their Facebook page, reading thus:

Now they were very responsive, when I managed to work out how face book pages work :). 

The Book Boys Hi Sean, Our reasons for the male/female author split is merely an organisational one! We often experiment different ways to display our $4.99 novels and this is the latest. We did not intend to imply that women and men must have different tastes in books (as I know personally this is simply not true!) and I apologise for the offense. Thank you for the feedback, it will be passed along. – Ashlyn

So thanks Ashlyn and The Book Boys for your timely response. 

So my readers what’s helpful for you going into a discount book store?  I am used to rummaging through second hand stores for a bargain.  Do you think the male/ female split, though sexist will work for customers and should that be the only consideration if it does?  Do stores have a responsibility to educate or inform the consumer?

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Gender and Publishing links

I have spent a number of hours on a Sekrit project today that will be revealed in due course. 

There have been some good gender and publishing posts with a focus on the local scene.  I draw your attention to the following:

Number crunching 10 years of the Ditmars

I was sitting with Jules last week watching The Voice on fast forward (we record it then zip through all the boring bits) and I suddenly has this urge to number crunch the Ditmars.  Admittedly, it was an urge sparked by the recent Ditmar ballot which can be found here.

…

I was also only interested in the three fiction categories – Novel, Novella and Short Story.  I did consider throwing in Collected Works / Anthologies but decided against it because what I wanted to look at was whether female writers were being recognised in Australia.

This is what I discovered [read on]

That was from the incorrigible Ian Mond.  Edit:  Check out his second post as well. Next is a breakdown of gender related statistics on Speculative Fiction novels published by Aussie authors in 2011 by the wonderful Tsana D.:

More Gender-centred Statistics on Australian-Authored SFFH Novels in 2011

After my earlier post about broad gender distributions in Australian novels last year, Tansy valiantly volunteered to add target age groups and genres to the mighty list of SFFH novels published in 2011. She sent the spreadsheet back to me and I poked Numbers into generating statistics and made some pie charts. Yay, pie charts!

First, because for some reason it didn’t occur to me to post it last time, the distribution of books published by different types publishers (large, small press and self pub). You can see which publishers I counted in which group in the earlier post.

[read on]

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Book Review–The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood

The Courier’s New Bicycle is Kim Westwood’s second novel and its nice and compact at 327 pages. Playing wonderfully to my own biases and beliefs, Westwood has taken some of my dark fears and made a scary reality of them.

The World
The world of The Courier’s New Bicycle  is a near future Melbourne.  Australia is in the midst of a fertility crises caused by a compromised H1N1 vaccine. The population is largely infertile and while several fertility companies sprang up to deal with the crisis, a swing in power to the religious right sees these companies outlawed. The resultant Australian cultural landscape is a dominionist’s wet dream.

With power In the grip of religious fanatics anything outside of very hetero normative ideals of gender are held in contempt.  Hessian frocked prayer groups wander the streets laying on hands and Neighbourly Watch lurks like a synthesis between the Gestapo and a Christian version of the Mutaween. 

Our Protagonist
The Courier’s New Bicycle features a “gender transgressive” protagonist, Salisbury Forth. Sal has achieved a comfortable( for Sal)  gender identity that sits between male and female.

Sal is a courier for an ethical hormone supplier and is good at the job, genetically gifted with a body for it.  Sal becomes a reluctant detective when unknown parties target the boss’ business. When Sal’s friend Albee is injected with kit laced with pesticides, the business war becomes personal. 

Is it a dystopia?
I’m not sure.  I find it an all too plausible reality, one that only requires a few changes to get to it from present day Australia.  Westwood has done an excellent job of extending current circumstances - political, social, environmental and religious. She tweaks recognisable institutions and extrapolates current Australian culture with skill.

The conservative party( both religiously and politically) Nation First is eerily close to a combination of Family First and One Nation. The contempt in which “gender transgessives” are held is not too different from conservative values held by the majority of the Australian population – only in The Courier’s New Bicycle hatred of “The Other” is given the imprimatur of both state and religion.

On Gender
The novel has an androgynous protagonist and is at least in part an exploration of the life and experiences of ‘The Other’.  Whether ‘The Other’ be the transgendered, the animal activist, the immigrant or the socially undesirable street racers. 

Now I don’t know if it’s the fact that I have been fortunate enough to listen to quality gender discussions and that I am comfortable in my gender/sexuality, but I didn’t find that exploration at all uncomfortable or confronting.

The treatment of said characters by the over zealous religious society inflamed my internal sense of social justice, but the treatment itself is sadly all too close to what ‘The Other’ experience in the here and now.  For a reader who has lived a very sheltered life their response will no doubt be different.
For me, I am just happy to have a cracking good story, whose protagonist and supporting characters are drawn from genderqueer and other diverse communities.

What impressed me.
There’s a tangibility to Westwood’s world building.  I don’t know Melbourne all that well but it feels to me that she’s captured the essence of the city and then cloaked it in this oppressive tension. The spectre of Neighbourly Watch always in the background and the fact that Sal’s entire life is pretty much illegal.

Honestly The Courier’s New Bicycle is a great read, an Australian speculative fiction, novel with elements of crime drama thrown in. When people think speculative fiction is just shooting rockets at Jupiter or dog fights in space, press this into their hand.

A beautiful sketch of darkly shaded future that I hope never comes to pass.

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This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012.  Please check out this page for more great writing from Australian women.

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Feminism - where I admit to being indecisive?

I have almost finished listening to the latest episode of Galactic Suburbia, a great podcast that manages to raise a feminist viewpoint unthreateningly.  Indeed I have to wonder if the idea of militant, man hating feminism is a result of severe poisoning of the well by threatened conservatives with vested interests. In much the same way that atheists get called militant(when generally they are being vocal).

In that podcast the women of Galactic Suburbia applauded the stance that Paul Cornell took and pointed out that it had problems.

However, and I think it was Alisa (paraphrasing here you should really go and you know LISTEN to HER) who still voiced some sadness/annoyance that it was a man who had said what women had been talking about for YEARS. 

Why is it that he gets listened to?

And that got me thinking.  Why is it that a man gets listened to (preferentially so) by men AND women?  Is it culture? Is it in someway biological? A complex interplay of both? 

I seem to remember a skills coach teaching other women how to talk like a man, not just words but inflection. If I recall correctly, men generally make statements, women often have an upward inflection that makes even statements sound like a question - thereby suggesting uncertainty.

I dug around for some studies, but haven’t stumbled across anything yet.

I did, however, come across a post on whether men can call themselves feminists or allies.  On the one hand I feel that If I call myself a feminist its appropriation, that by talking about feminist or gender issues I am perpetuating the problem (I am a man and you will listen to me, while I tell you all about feminism) on the other hand I don’t want to shrink from that label because it might be seen to be a dirty word,  In much the same way that I don’t want to shrink from calling myself an atheist. 

Allies just doesn’t seem to be committed enough.

On the other hand I wonder if there is utility in me speaking on Feminism if my audience is male.  Is it better for me to act as a gateway to feminist understanding, for men or people who have their women filters on? 

I don’t know if this last point holds though, as it was me listening to the women of Galactic Suburbia, that lit the flame so to speak, I didn’t need no man telling me about Feminism

I note also that male writers who write about feminist issues tend to have less threats of sexual violence levelled against them, less hand waving of their “silly disturbed hysterical thoughts” is this because the idiots who sprout misogynist crap actually are forced to listen to/read the arguments?

So here I sit. Ever so slightly undecided.  Do I explain gender bias, and attack misogyny where I see it?

Do I fall in to my familiar role of teacher?  Or should I just act as a signpost gently pushing people in the general direction of good feminist resources?

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Gender Parity too much for London Super Comic Con

 

Last week Paul Cornell of Dr Who and DC Comics fame made a personal statement about gender parity, it caused much debate and discussion all of which was largely positive – you can peruse some of the discussion at my round up post here.

Essentially he was prepared to step down from any panel he was on and be replaced by a suitably qualified female member of the audience.  The problems with this plan were pointed out and the discussion moved on to what could effect real change.  I believe the Fifty Fifty Festivals organisation is the outcome of the discussion that surrounds Paul’s ‘stunt’. 

Really good news.

So what did the organisers of Paul’s latest scheduled panel appearance do?  Well this is what Paul advises us

This is mainly because Stan Lee is in town for the London Super Comic Con.  I'll be going along to that convention, spending some considerable time at my table, and helping to judge the cosplay contest, but I won't be appearing on the DC panel because, in the face of my Panel Parity Plan, the organisers decided the simplest course of action, rather than find an equal number of women who could talk on the panel in an informed way about DC Comics (there's no reason everyone on the panel has to work for the company) was to chuck me off it. 

I've considered a few responses to that, but I think in the end the most reasonable course of action is to go along and talk to people about the situation.

Now I don’t know the specific relationship legal or otherwise between Mr Cornell, DC Comics or the organisers but I’d like to think that If I was the monkey in charge of the PR/Organisation, an email to Paul might have gone something like this.

 

Mr Cornell,

I note with interest and a little dismay your Panel Parity plan. The committee has discussed the issues that brought about this proposed course of action from you and we ask that you do not proceed.

We agree that something should be done to address gender parity at our conventions, the panel’s make up was an oversight.  To change it this year, at such short notice would be difficult and disruptive.

We are open to suggestions about how we might improve gender parity next year and would appreciate, your suggestions.

Warmest regards

P.R. Monky

Frankly it’s called communication.  And yes perhaps Paul could have contacted them directly and made his opinions known privately.  I’d like to think, however, that a professional organisation who has to deal with any number of “creative personalities” would be adept at smoothing things over, compromise etc.

Instead it seems that these organisers come from the George W Bush school of negotiation.

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Galactic Suburbia Episode 54 & Android App

The Women of Galactic Suburbia are at it again, chalking and talking up Episode 54.  Tansy talks Lego and there appears to be a whole raft of Gender topics, discussed – sounds very crunchy.

They tease us, their fans, with promise of a feedback episode.

The Show Notes are here

You can download the mp3 direct from here

You can stream from the player below

Podcast Powered By Podbean

OR

You can try the Galactic Suburbia Plus Android app

I created¹ an app yesterday that collects the mobile feed of both Galactic Suburbia and Galactic chat podbean sites. 

Downloading the App is a much quicker way for Android users to connect to the site -cuts out the step of opening the browser and connecting to a bookmarked page.  With this App you get both feeds and it’s as easy as hitting the tab to flick between the two.

I have tested it on my Galaxy 5 over a wifi network and it works very well.

The download link is here if you are reading this blog via an android device or if you have your phone handy you can scan the QR code below.  It leads to the Appsgeyser website.

Worthwhile if you like streaming over a wifi connected android tablet, but probably not financially viable on any but the most generous data plans on mobiles.  Because you know how long the crew can talk …

Screenshot

 

Note:  Don’t contact the Galactic Suburbia site if it there are issues with the app itself, this a fan creation by me - you can contact me below in the comments if for some reason you can’t get it to work.

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^{1. Created in the sense that I cut and pasted some links and clicked some options.  I’m no code money↩}

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Wonder Women the Untold Story of American Super heroines

This short film was lifted from the Austral-Asian Specfic Daily.  It’s a very brief discussion about the history of women in comics and ties in with the gender theme of today’s posts.  I am also reading Comix: A History of Comic Books in America which seems to be very light on gender discussion.

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