A Female Mass Exodus From The Masthead?

Back in 2010, Lambda Book Award finalist and poet Amy King introduced the result of the annual “count” done by VIDA, a women’s literary organization.

The survey addresses an age-old question – despite wave after wave of feminist victories, how come women represent such a small proportion of the writers in the magazine industry?

"We know women write. We know women read,” she wrote.

"Many have already begun speculating; more articles and groups are pointing out what our findings suggest: the numbers of articles and reviews simply don’t reflect how many women are actually writing."

The VIDA study found that women accounted for just 27 per cent of bylines in The New Yorker, 16 per cent forThe New Republic, 15 per cent for The New York Review of Books, 21 per cent for Harper’s Magazine and 26 per cent for The Atlantic. Notice a trend?

In response, writer Elissa Strauss sent out a series of questions to the big names in the magazine biz, and, with that, got the industry talking.

Though not every publication hit her back with a response, most were sympathetic. However, none were able to develop a plan to turn things around.

"The dearth of female bylines…is an industry-wide issue,” typed Harper's editor Ellen Rosenbush. “There may be some sort of a historical hangover from past years that has resulted in us getting fewer pitches from female writers, but I would like to change that equation."

Ruth Franklin, a senior editor at The New Republic, weighed in on the book publishing industry earlier this month as well.

Examining major titles from Fall's 2010 publishing catalogs, sourced from thirteen publishing houses, the results were no different. 55 per cent of books were penned by men, and 45 per cent by women. Random House had only 37 per cent of titles written by women! And though the “big boys” did bad, the independents did worse.

“I speculated that independents—more iconoclastic, publishing more work in translation, and perhaps less focused on the bottom line—would turn out to be more equitable than the big commercial houses,” Franklin wrote. “Boy, was I wrong.”

No, not every question has an answer. And in this case, there isn’t one yet. But it doesn’t seem like anyone is satisfied with things the way they are now.

All we can say is... ladies, pick up those pens and start pitching! Lets take the industry by storm.

Image from MorgueFile

Drew Penner
		About the author:
		Drew Penner is a thinker, a cyclist, a Journalism graduate, and ladies man. He is perfectly peculiar, but charming nonetheless.  Born in Taiwan, he is partial to drum & bass, unconventional humour, and very deep breathing. He likes music, art, culture and fashion, but swears to high heavens that he aint no hipster. Like a menstrual cycle, he only pops into the office about once a month, and the rest of the time you can find him out and about, wandering, wondering, writing for the masses. He contributes to WOMAN.ca, thinkCONTRA, and maintains an online stream of consciousness called www.urbandynamix.com.
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