Quote:
Originally Posted by Ea
I made an educated guess, didn't count exactly, but still it was interesting to note that I read more men authors than I thought I did. It's always interesting to take a look at what we actually do, rather than what we assume we do - as in the article linked to in this post. |
Regarding the article linked to (very honest and interesting), I believe that the explanation, in part, lies in deeply ingrained prejudices that are shared by women and men alike. The article hints that today, there may be more women writers than men in the non-fiction field. This in itself is interesting: serious stuff (non-fiction) is still mostly male. But I am pretty sure that if we had access to detailed statistics by genre, you would find that the women to men ratio goes higher as the perceived literary value of the genre goes down. Women writers are legion. Women writers who aspire to "serious" literature are probably still way fewer than men in the same field. There are other factors of course (some subjects are considered more feminine or masculine than others, independently of perceived literary value), but basically, I think it's still very hard for most people to envision anything a woman does, apart from raising a family, as "serious" or "important" stuff. Things are changing, of course and happily, but deep down there is still more prejudice than we'd like to believe.