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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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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Gender Post Round Up

The past month has seen a bit of discussion on Gender and fiction, gender and con panels.  Perhaps its because I am interested in the topic that I am seeing more of it.  But what I hope is happening is a little consciousness raising flowing through the book world.

So here are some recent posts, some of which I have participated in.  All are entertaining and instructive.  I’d even say read the comments.

Panel  Parity – The post that seems to have birthed a number of others commenting on gender parity at conventions.

Or maybe sometimes Equality MIGHT Mean Half… [the Paul Cornell Parity Project Edition] - Tansy Rayner Roberts commenting on the above

The Cornell Ratio: Should SFF Convention Panels Be 50/50 Male and Female? – Tor commenting on Cornell’s suggestion.

Positive Discrimination – Cheryl Morgan commenting on the Cornell post

If you have got you head around that lot it might be worth taking a look at Cheryl Morgan’s review of Episode 16 of the Writer and the Critic  in Kirstyn And Mondy Do Gender

And because we are talking Gender, here’s my own gender report of the years reading to date:

Feel free to add any links to other recent gender posts in the comments.

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End of Year Gender Audit

Some time in March¹ this year 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.

Why?

Some may ague that you should read what you enjoy, not be forced into a choice³.  I think to some degree that’s fine especially if you are just a recreational reader.  But I also review books so I think it behoves reviewers to examine and challenge bias if it’s obvious and institute structural changes to their reading selection in an attempt to curtail unconscious bias.

The results

I made a conscious decision to request books from women.  You don’t always get the books you request and a lot of times you get books that you don’t.  I also decided to be less conscious of choice towards the end of the year.

60/40 was the split in favour of men.

A surprise

Of my 5 star rated reviews 73 % were women⁴

I am still keen to do better next year, as I note that there women to be read in my TBR pile this year.

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1. much to my chagrin I as unable to rescue this information from my hacked wordpress site

2. Even this may be generous, no lower than 15% I would bet my signed William Gibson on.

3.When you start to dig a little deeper on how we think and make decisions, choice doesn’t really seem that free, i.e. guided by preferences, manipulated by marketing, undermined by subconscious bias.

4.Still reading Roil by Trent Jamieson and think it will be a five.

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