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How we calculated the gender balance of UK literary journalism How we calculated the gender balance of UK literary journalism
(4 months later)
With one newspaper (the Mail on Sunday) managing only 13% of reviews by women, one magazine (the London Review of Books) only 9.5% – and just two titles out of 15, the Times and the Independent on Sunday, achieving parity in this respect or better – the figures for the sample period of March 2013 certainly don't look good.With one newspaper (the Mail on Sunday) managing only 13% of reviews by women, one magazine (the London Review of Books) only 9.5% – and just two titles out of 15, the Times and the Independent on Sunday, achieving parity in this respect or better – the figures for the sample period of March 2013 certainly don't look good.
Just as imbalanced, against a backdrop of at least superficial equality in parts of the wider book world, are the percentages for authors reviewed, with the LRB (8.7%) and New Statesman (26.1%) reviewing fewest books by women, and female authors also one-third or less of those reviewed in the MoS (30.4%) and the FT (33.3%); though again some papers did better, with the Sunday Telegraph (55.2%), the Observer (52.1%) and the IoS (50%) all scoring 50% or more. And we are no better: in the Guardian, 44.9% of reviewers were women and 34.1% of books reviewed were by women.Just as imbalanced, against a backdrop of at least superficial equality in parts of the wider book world, are the percentages for authors reviewed, with the LRB (8.7%) and New Statesman (26.1%) reviewing fewest books by women, and female authors also one-third or less of those reviewed in the MoS (30.4%) and the FT (33.3%); though again some papers did better, with the Sunday Telegraph (55.2%), the Observer (52.1%) and the IoS (50%) all scoring 50% or more. And we are no better: in the Guardian, 44.9% of reviewers were women and 34.1% of books reviewed were by women.
If you're looking for explanations, there are no reliable rules, only patterns. It can evidently help, for example, if the literary editor is a woman. That's the case at all the titles with the highest percentages of women in one category or both, the IoS, Observer, Sunday Telegraph and Times. But it's clearly no trump card. The low-scoring MoS has a female lit ed, and the LRB has had a woman editing it since 1992. Also a key factor is a publication's ratio of non-fiction to fiction reviews, with the non-fiction figure high in current affairs magazines (82.6% in the NS, 71.4% in the Spectator) and literary journals, and in some newspapers but not others.If you're looking for explanations, there are no reliable rules, only patterns. It can evidently help, for example, if the literary editor is a woman. That's the case at all the titles with the highest percentages of women in one category or both, the IoS, Observer, Sunday Telegraph and Times. But it's clearly no trump card. The low-scoring MoS has a female lit ed, and the LRB has had a woman editing it since 1992. Also a key factor is a publication's ratio of non-fiction to fiction reviews, with the non-fiction figure high in current affairs magazines (82.6% in the NS, 71.4% in the Spectator) and literary journals, and in some newspapers but not others.
Year after year, the Samuel Johnson prize longlist testifies that much of non-fiction is a man's world, and many of the fields that books sections are keenest to cover (political and military history, economics, political biography, popular science) are especially male-dominated.Year after year, the Samuel Johnson prize longlist testifies that much of non-fiction is a man's world, and many of the fields that books sections are keenest to cover (political and military history, economics, political biography, popular science) are especially male-dominated.
If you review much more non-fiction than fiction, you are almost bound to push up the percentage of male authors reviewed; and also likely – because those asked to assess such books tend to be specialists in the same field – to push up the percentage of male reviewers. Conversely, doing more fiction than others – as at the Times (52.3% fiction) and the Observer (50% fiction) – normally boosts the overall percentages for female authors and reviewers. (The LRB's dramatically low scores for both – its March 2012 figures were less unequal – are partly explained by a scarcity of fiction reviews).If you review much more non-fiction than fiction, you are almost bound to push up the percentage of male authors reviewed; and also likely – because those asked to assess such books tend to be specialists in the same field – to push up the percentage of male reviewers. Conversely, doing more fiction than others – as at the Times (52.3% fiction) and the Observer (50% fiction) – normally boosts the overall percentages for female authors and reviewers. (The LRB's dramatically low scores for both – its March 2012 figures were less unequal – are partly explained by a scarcity of fiction reviews).
When the figures are broken down to show coverage of fiction and non-fiction separately, some titles' stats offer pointers to how imbalance can be countered, beyond simply increasing the fiction count. Types of non-fiction where women are well represented (social and cultural history, say, or general biography) can be moved up the agenda, and weighty "men's books", shockingly, reviewed by women.When the figures are broken down to show coverage of fiction and non-fiction separately, some titles' stats offer pointers to how imbalance can be countered, beyond simply increasing the fiction count. Types of non-fiction where women are well represented (social and cultural history, say, or general biography) can be moved up the agenda, and weighty "men's books", shockingly, reviewed by women.
In fiction, similar moves can be made: show a bias towards literary fiction (perhaps especially by younger writers), romances and children's books, and a bias against mainly male genres such as SF, horror and thrillers; and (as in non-fiction) break the unspoken rule that says boys do boys and girls do girls, and send novels by authors such as Julian Barnes or JM Coetzee to women reviewers.In fiction, similar moves can be made: show a bias towards literary fiction (perhaps especially by younger writers), romances and children's books, and a bias against mainly male genres such as SF, horror and thrillers; and (as in non-fiction) break the unspoken rule that says boys do boys and girls do girls, and send novels by authors such as Julian Barnes or JM Coetzee to women reviewers.
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