April 14th, 2008
by
the angry black woman
I direct your attention to this post in which the Talebones editor gets a note from a female subscriber put off by only male names on the cover of the latest issue. And as if the Internet has not hosted this discussion many, many, many times, he proceeds to be vaguely dismissive of her concerns. And to top it off, a bunch of white men come ’round to insist loudly that he completely dismiss them. Because who cares about the opinions of those who give money to magazines?
And they wonder why I’m angry.
I don’t intend to get more into that than I did, because there comes a point when one cannot spend all of one’s time educating those who don’t wish to be educated. If they are determined to walk in ignorance, nothing I say can help. But, it is a good jumping off point for a related discussion.
Something I noticed when putting together the print fiction roundup for SFBookswap: Asimov’s published more women on average so far this year than either of the other digests. Substantially more. At first I thought I was imagining it, so I broke the numbers down.
Asimov’s 2008 stats:
- January: 5 total, 2 by women, 40%
- February: 6 total, 2 by women, 33%
- March: 8 total, 4 by women, 50%
- April/May: 11 total, 5 by women, 45%
- June: 7 total, 2 by women, about 30%
On average, about 41% women. This is for a magazine that publishes mostly science fiction stories.
F&SF’s 2008 stats:
- January: 6 total, 2 by women, 33%
- February: 7 total, 1.5 by women, 25%
- March: 6 total, 2 by women, 33%
- April: 6 total, 1 by women, 17%
- May: 7 total, 2 by women, about 30%
On average, about 25% women in a magazine that publishes both SF and Fantasy.
And Analog has only published two stories by women in 2008 so far.
There are probably many reasons why Asimov’s has more women than F&SF or Analog, but in the context of the discussion of gender in this genre and the assumptions people make about who writes what (women write more Fantasy and are less interested in SF and blah blah blah), it is curious that Asimov’s has more women in its TOCs than F&SF (so far this year).
Even more curious, I hardly ever see this mentioned. Oh people are always willing to talk about Gordon van Gelder and his issues, myself amongst them, and I am far from suggesting we start giving out cookies to those who show even an inkling of doing something that makes sense. But I really feel that Sheila Williams should get more notice (perhaps even accolades) for doing exactly what all of us who are annoyed by gender imbalance have asked other editors to do.
(And let me point out again: we have not asked them to publish stories JUST because they were written by women, or to not publish stories JUST because they were written by men.)
There are other magazine editors whose awareness is apparent in the product. Strange Horizons is right at the top of my list, as is Fantasy magazine (though I’m biased there, as I work for them). Can the same be said for other pro markets? Semi-pro? Zine? Online? I’m interested. One thing I’d like to do on the FSFWiki is to keep track of this data. Obviously we can’t track every SF magazine, but we can keep an eye on the pro markets, the influential small markets, etc. I want to do this not only so I can point to horrendous imbalance and say “OMG you must change your ways!” but also so I can be sure to praise and bring notice to markets and editors who are examples of what to do and how to be.
Are there any other markets you’d particularly like to praise/bring notice to on this issue?
ETA: Some more data for you to chew on:
| Year |
F&SF |
RoF |
Asimov’s |
| 1991* |
35% |
|
|
| 1992 |
35% |
|
|
| 1993 |
40% |
|
|
| 1994 |
46% |
|
|
| 1995 |
43% |
|
|
| 1996 |
44% |
|
|
| 1997** |
40% |
66% |
28% |
| 1998 |
38% |
48% |
23% |
| 1999 |
27% |
29% |
22% |
| 2000 |
28% |
50% |
25% |
| 2001 |
19% |
33% |
27% |
| 2002 |
16% |
39% |
30% |
| 2003 |
22% |
40% |
19% |
| 2004*** |
18% |
47% |
27% |
| 2005 |
19% |
40% |
28% |
| 2006 |
20% |
48% |
28% |
| 2007 |
23% |
36% |
35% |
| 2008 |
25% |
50% |
41% |
|
|
|
|
| * F&SF: Kristine Rusch takes over the reins |
| ** F&SF: Gordon van Gelder replaces Kristine Rusch |
| *** Asimov’s: Gardner Dozois replaced by Sheila Williams |
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- More blogging by
the angry black woman at
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Filed under Books & Literature, FSF Activism, Publishing | Comments (41)
Thanks, Tempest for pointing out why the metrics is necessary. I had not realized how many biases and prejudices I bring to reading without realizing them. This is a koan that slaps me into considering gender equality.
So important to be doing this. I’ve started adding some of the numbers to the FSFwiki.
I know that Broad Universe has done some numbers; I’ll try to dig those up.
Broad Universe posts numbers here:
http://broaduniverse.org/stats.html
Hi there! I’ve been reading this blog with great interest since I discovered it. I just have one stat to report: of the eighteen invitees to Clarion this year – there were almost two hundred applicants this year, a bumper crop – eleven are women. I was pleased to see that. Let’s hope it translates into sales soon enough (or is there a pipeline problem there, too?)…
Monica: do you track the gender breakdown for the past five or ten years of Clarion?
following up on the previous Clarion question, what is the gender breakdown in the applicant pool?
How are you accounting for pseudonyms, or is that not a problem? I know many authors write under them and some great early sci-fi works were penned by women using male pseudonyms, but I don’t know how prevelant that is now; or how you’d tell. I doubt it would dramatically alter the stats. Still, if that breakdown holds true across the industry, that means the same monetary incentive remains.
I don’t know, actually. I recall seeing pictures of past Clarion classes, and the makeup was maybe 40-50% women, but that’s an impression.
I’ll ask the workshop coordinator once things settle down a bit… :)
I added further data to the end of the post and updated a mistake in the F&SF stats — I mistakenly said there was 1 woman published in March, there were 2.
I’d like to see an analysis for the Writers of the Future contest. They judge submissions without ever seeing the author’s name.
It’s easy to say “I don’t notice the author’s gender”, as the source post does, but there are studies of numerous prejudices that find that people discriminate even while they believe they don’t. (I know I read somewhere about orchestras conducting auditions behind curtains, using carpets to muffle the sound of high heels – and finding that the number of women who got hired increased dramatically. I’m having trouble finding an online cite, though. Anyone have the data?)
On blind auditions & orchestra — this has been widely reported. A version of the (1997/2000) paper is available at NBER; it was published as “Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact Of ‘Blind’ Auditions On Female Musicians,” American Economic Review, 2000, v90(4,Sep), 715-741. Princeton press releases at the time (research was out of Princeton): one, two (they’re slightly different).
In science, the awesome report on women in science, Beyond Bias and Barriers, identified a blind review process as a key reform that journals could implement to eliminate or minimize the impact of sexism on the review process. Despite this, almost no journals have implemented blind peer review (as far as I know).
Our Clarion 2007 class was 10 men, 9 women. Instructors were 3 men, 3 women. However, Ann Vandermeer accompanied Jeff and was really an instructor in her own right, even if she wasn’t ‘official’.
I hope this helps. I love it when numbers are posted.
Rob, in this small field of ours, it’s generally pretty easy to work out the gender of authors, so while pseudonyms might delay identification, it’s not that much of an issue.
I’ve heard reference to GVG’s “issues” regarding sexism before, but have never been able to turn up anything substantive. Where does that impression (or knowledge) come from?
Laura: that’s the one. I tried several Google searches with different keywords before giving up – but all I found out was that “high heels” is a common spam term.
One explanation for GVG’s “issues” — one I am somewhat inclined towards, given the fact that he’s launched a bunch of women writers (Mary Rickert for one), and that he’s gone out of his way to provide statistics and data on gender of submissions to F&SF, and to provide a forum for discussing the issue over on the F&SF boards, and that the submissions data tend to indicate (iirc) that he’s publishing roughly the same proportion of women who submit to F&SF — is that they are not issues he has with women authors, but rather issues that women authors have with him.
That is, there is nothing that will suppress the percentage of women that you can publish like a well-publicized rumor that you don’t like to publish women.
i wouldn’t say that’s entirely true, Ben. I’ll dig up some links when I get off my tiny computer, but the issues brought up are not just “He doesn’t publish the wimins!” it’s his attitude about certain kinds of stories, plus the “I’ll put up a forum for you to talk abotu these issues then dismiss you as bitter haters who are just mad I rejected you and anyway readers don’t care about this stuff”, plus the “Welcome to the club, they did it to me, they did it to Jesus, now they’re doing it to you” vibe from the Nightshade/Eclipse One discussion, not to mention the employing a guy who routinely expresses sexist and racist opinions under the F&SF header that constitutes a FEW of the issues Gordon has.
I realize that you like him and all, but to dismiss his issues as just the problems that silly people who don’t know have (which may not be what you intended, but is definitely the way that can come off, even to someone who knows you well as I do) is just really unhelpful and obfuscates those real issues that exist.
Monica, here’s the “Sexism and Gordon Van Gelder” thread over at Nightshade, which provides some background from about a year ago – albeit in the form of a long and heated messageboard discussion. Skimming through it, I am especially struck by the awesomeness of Charles Coleman Finlay.
Just a note, not a dictation: remember that this thread is also about giving attention to markets that we DON’T have issues with.
(gets sucked into the old thread on Nightshade)
Hey, look, there’s one K. Tempest challenging GVG on his assumptions. Small world.
Ben, I count only two out of the last five years: Mary Rickert from 2003 and Ysabeau Wilce from 2004. Where’s this bunch you speak of? :p If you go further back, and start from June 1997 through 2002, I can’t find any others. The last time I did research on this matter I’d found that Realms of Fantasy had launched far more careers, and it’s a bi-monthly.
Transferring the blame onto the shoulders of female authors is a bit inappropriate, and it doesn’t help this conversation. If F&SF acts as a hostile environment, to women, they go elsewhere, as does any author that doesn’t feel welcome. That’s freedom of choice, in this market . . . and that could lead to fewer choices in the slush, with regards to submissions by female authors.
I have to agree that installing Dave Truesdale as a mouthpiece of F&SF certainly didn’t help matters, no :p
If we’re talking about sites with good proportions, I love
Lone Star Stories, which last year had sixty percent . . . I usually like most of their offerings, including the poetry!
Is there a numbers page on the Wiki? I’ve got some ‘Best Of’ and related anthologies kicking around that I could count.
One, one female author. Ah ah ahhhhh!
[...] at Feminist SF – The Blog!, the angry black woman in Are We Talking About Gender and Magazines AGAIN? …Yes talks about gender disparities in several top F/SF magazines. She’s analyzed Asimov, Fantasy [...]
J Andrews — the Broad Universe stats page includes several years of “Best Of” titles in the count, although it may not have the most recent numbers.
J. Andrews: I set up a page at “Statistics on publication of women authors. (That may ultimately not be the best title, but we can work with it!)
I’ve added stats here and there to various topics but nothing consistently or thoroughly. We can start to add stats here — yours are very welcome! — and disperse / link as helpful.
Ah. I had assumed the Broad Universe stats page was static and several years out of date. I’d also assumed I’d looked at it the last time this discussion came to my attention.
That’s what I get for assuming without looking!
Will check out Broad Universe and the wiki stats page in more detail tomorrow.
Thanks!
Your data! It is beautiful!
Thanks for compiling it!
First, I’d like to preface my statement with the fact that I publish Sybil’s Garage, which has from the beginning a very large number of women in our TOCs. (Our current issue has 12 of 18 contributors who are female, or 67%).
Heather W. above posted this link to gender statistics from Broad Universe: http://broaduniverse.org/stats.html
From a cursory examination of these numbers, there is a larger proportion of men writing SF. It would therefore follow that there will be a larger number of men getting published, would it not? Let’s say for example that there are 40% women and 60% men who write SF. Shouldn’t we therefore expect that same ratio (4:6) to appear in the table of contents of the largest magazines, those that get the most submissions and therefore the greatest sampling from the population if they are being gender neutral? A number above or below that percentage/ratio would be a better indicator rather than saying simply that these magazines in question publish fewer women than men. You’d help your argument if you were to find that number and use it as a baseline.
Anyway, I’m just thinking statistically. I also think it’s a great idea that you published the numbers here so individuals can see the statistics for themselves.
Matt:
I’d say there are two sets of problems when it comes to diversity in SF, which can be summarized as:
1. Why are this month’s figures so skewed?
2. Why will next year’s be just as skewed?
A convincing argument has been made that the short-term reason for the gender imbalance is, as you said, that women don’t submit as much as men. The gender ratio in the Big Four magazines closely matches the gender ratio of the submissions, suggesting that editors are treating what they get fairly.
But the longer-term question is: why aren’t the submissions more diverse in the first place?
There are a lot of possible explanations for this, but let me take on just one, then link to some previous discussion elsewhere.
I often see what I call the “Men are from Mars, women are from Elfland” idea: men write SF and women write fantasy. However, the ROF statistics show a majority of submissions to the major all-fantasy magazine are by men.
Not specifically for Matt, but to anyone who’s new to the general issue:
ABW discusses what markets could do to make the slushpile more diverse.
Two especially notable responses outside the comments thread:
Stephen H. Segal responds with why this makes business sense.
Nick Mamatas explains what he did to make Clarkesworld diverse.
*sigh* I understand that white men are really sensitive about perceived accusations of sexism, but I really think that your argument would be a lot more persuasive if you’d just be a little bit more careful about your tone. I get that you engage best through giving paternalistic advice, but it’s really not helping your cause.
Also, I don’t think you should get offended about being called on that. My boyfriend doesn’t think that circular arguments (like citing the percentages of women vs. men published, as a reason why the percentages of women vs. men published are different) are valid either; and he’s a white guy too.
I don’t think my argument is circular at all. Also, please don’t lump me in as “generic white dude who doesn’t get it.” I DO get it, and I have been getting it long before it was being made an issue in these and other forums. All one has to do is look at the Sybil’s Garage table of contents for every issue to prove that.
All I was saying is that, when looking at statistical data, you have to take into account the ratios of your sampling pool. If there are 40% female writers in SF and, on average, the leading market publishes only 25% of stories from women, then YES, there is a discrepancy (15%). I think, however, looking for an even 50/50 split would be assuming that magazines receive an even split of genders, which may or may not be the case.
And, yes, TC, courting diversity in the slush pile is important in any magazine and should be done as often and as broadly as possible.
I didn’t want this to get lost in the trackbacks or wherever the hell I found it — on a related topic, XKCD has looked at the numbers of female leads of some set (not sure what) of Hollywood films. … just on related issues. I set up a fsfwiki page for this, too. (why hadn’t i thought to do this before, i wonder?)
Oh, I love Asimov’s, and I love Sheila Williams. I like what she picks, I like that she has the Dell Awards, I like that she’s here. She’s my favorite editor of those I read regularly just on the basis of taste.
From a cursory examination of these numbers, there is a larger proportion of men writing SF.
Actually, Matt, the only thing one can take away from those numbers is that more men are being PUBLISHED, which is not the same as more men writing it. Obviously it would be difficult to do a survey of all people out there writing SF but not being published, or not being published in big enough venues to get noticed in those stats. However, you can’t assume from who’s been published how many WANT to be, nor how many aren’t because of bias.
And as we know that under-represented groups are often not under-represented because their product is somehow worse than the over-represented group, one of the conclusions we CAN draw is that there are probably some biases (unconscious, yes, but not inexcusable) at work.
We don’t know that the % of women in the slushpile is pretty close to the % published in every market. That was true for F&SF a few years back, according to Gordon. But is it true now? Is it true for Asimov’s, Analog, Tor Books, Baen Books, Del Rey, Nightshade, etc etc? It may not be. The fact that people keep saying that the percentages match across the board is SO VERY ANNOYING because we don’t know if that’s true, they just assume it or apply data from one or two markets to everyone.
Also, your argument is circular.
Plus, the idea that more men writing means more should get published is, frankly, silly. More men certainly think they’re entitled to be published, sure, but we’re assuming that there’s the same percentage of competent writers in any given pool of men as any given pool of women. I haven’t found this to be particularly true.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Just because a market gets more submissions from men they shouldn’t assume that the majority of the good stuff is coming from men. Just looking at the fantasy magazine stats Sean puts up every month shows that far more men are sending stuff to us than get published. There’s a combination of reasons for that, obviously, but one of them might be that women are just out-writing the men (though I honestly don’t know, as I’m not on the fiction side of things, I only see the finished product, like you do… but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was true).
ABW: Plus, the idea that more men writing means more should get published is, frankly, silly. More men certainly think they’re entitled to be published, sure, but we’re assuming that there’s the same percentage of competent writers in any given pool of men as any given pool of women. I haven’t found this to be particularly true.
Actually, setting aside the competency argument, and the justice argument, I have another affirmative argument as to why publishing women disproportionately might make good business sense:
IF it is either true that (a) women and men write on different subjects, from different perspectives, or with different points or insights, OR (b) people are attracted more to writers of their own gender (whether because of content differences such as (a) or even simply a matter of attraction to names — lots of research on that latter point of late);
THEN there is an affirmative audience gain from publishing women disproportionately. If (a) is true we might assume, for instance, that many of the stories men are telling have already been told, while some of the stories women might tell have not been told (or not told as frequently, or not yet told well) — simply on numbers.
Similarly if (b) is true then it’s probably safe to assume that men are, relative to women, a much more tapped-into prospective audience. In other words, of the pool of prospective and continuing SF consumers, the men have already been recruited/enticed at higher rates than the women. (I think I can safely say that this is absolutely true.)
(I note that if, as I suspect, men are often aversive to reading works with female bylines, out of their own subconscious or admitted sexism, then they are a prospective loss. Personally I say fuck ‘em. Like women, these men can learn to fucking read across gender lines to “the other”. “Chop some wood, ’twill do you good.”)
This argument applies equally well to people of color, non-English languages, non-Western tropes, and so on — any conceivable market segment which includes more and less well-represented audience and writers.
The F&SF slush bomb was in August 2006.. somewhere around there, right? Are there any numbers available on if this may have affected F&SF’s stats?
I don’t know their lead time on when a story gets submitted to what issue it’s most likely to appear in.
update on the stats table, the first three percentages for F&SF were wrong, so I fixed them. One thing I intend to do sometime in the future is to double check all the data myself to make sure it’s correct.
One of the things I noticed from the Linville paper (originally from 2002; republished 2007 at Strange Horizons) is that two editors described being surprised when they ran the numbers of their submissions. They remembered it being closer to 50/50, but fewer women submitted than that.
This is in accord with research that shows that people overrepresent quantities of women. For instance, in conversations, people will remember the conversation as dominated by women — when women and men talked equally, or even when women talked less, according to the quantitative measures.
[...] the percentage of stories by men and women these editors have selected over that timespan, as Feminist SF – the Blog recently [...]