Gender bias at NPR — and what it reveals about the world of literary fiction
The truth is that major publishers put out more books written by men than women. Print publications write more about books written by men. NPR discusses more books written by men. Unsurprisingly, the best seller list is dominated by books written by men: men outnumbered women 25 to 11 on last year’s number-one-best-seller fiction charts. And to be honest, I’m not innocent of this either — in the last calendar year, of the 76 books I wrote about, 42 were by men and only 34 were by women.
Clearly, female novelists have neither the cultural capital nor the financial capital that male novelists do. When will people face up to that? And when will it change?
Please do go read this whole piece; lots of excellent points. And I’ll admit, I’d have guessed NPR did better on the gender balance issue, which just goes to show it’s always worth doing the math.
(Source: malindalo)
