Gender bias

I joined Sisters in Crime several years ago for a variety of reasons and have totally embraced the concept of equality for female writers in the industry, in general, and in the mystery genre, in particular. To me, it isn't a question of limiting men or of limiting men's access in the industry. It is about elevating the access of women.

Put it like this. It isn't just about women getting a bigger piece of the literary pie. It's about caking a bigger pie. Then, everyone benefits. (Not the perfect analogy, I know. It has flaws. But I think you get the point and I want to move on.)

There is an issue I was unaware of before I joined SinC and something the organization has been crusading about for years. It's the issue of gender bias in book reviews. Who is reviewed and why?

SinC's Monitoring Project has for more than two decades tracked mystery book reviews in key publications. And the bottomline is that even in the 21st Century -- yes, the enlightened 21st Century -- male authors tend to get more reviews than women. The Project recently reported that in 22 publications through the third quarter of 2010, only four reviewed more female authors than men.

An article in SinC's December newsletter mentioned a monitoring project conducted by Slate, the online magazine, in which it counted the adult fiction reviews in The New York Times over a two-year period. Its results showed 67 percent of the reviews went to men. And of those getting a double shot, with a review in the daily paper and in the Sunday Book Review, the number shot to 71 percent in favor of men.

(The newsletter also pointed out that only men made Publishers Weekly's Best of 2009 list.)

All of this makes me wonder -- Are there that many more male authors than female authors? I don't know the demographics but I doubt that is the case. Then -- and I can barely believe I'm about to say this -- are men inherently better writers than women? I doubt that, too.

So the only reasonable conclusion is there is a gender bias. But why?

I have worked for a national business news magazine (BusinessWeek), an international wire service (United Press International) and a newspaper (the African-American daily, The Philadelphia Tribune), and have written book reviews for each. And I know that if a publication wanted to review more books by women it is a simple decision to do so. Publications get tons of manuscripts. And it is up to the editors which books are reviewed.

It's obvious, it seems to me, something is wrong here. The question is, will anything be done about it. Since SinC has been fighting this battle for decades, it doesn't seem promising.

But what is promising is that three years ago I was totally unaware this problem existed. I wasn't enlightened. (I don't remember every book I have reviewed but I must sadly admit that probably only a few were by women.) So maybe education is part of the answer. Bringing this issue to light should help in its solution. I can't imagine that in the 21st Century it wouldn't be. And that, as the newsletter pointed out, is "precisely why Sisters in Crime started the Monitoring Project."

Thanks for reading and keep writing.