Where have all the guys gone?

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

Looking back at the OP, I think that much of this discussion is missing the forest for the trees. So overdrive/cloud library appears to be pushing more female authors than male?

I am not familiar with Cloud but I know Overdrive listings vary by local library. If the OP was looking only at books available through his/her local library (as opposed to all holdings of Cloud) then these listings might reflect local preferences and not be indicative of a national trend.

[JSWolf]

I know these are not real world stats and taken from just my observation using Overdrive at various libraries.

What I've noticed is that the majority of women authors are writing romance in various forms. That has to do with what the libraries buy.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

If you aren't selling, then it doesn't matter if you are Stephanie Myers turning bad fanfiction into bad mainstream fiction or if you are Haruki Murakami.

To be fair, E.L. James is the one turning bad fanfiction into bad mainstream fiction.

Stephanie Meyer just writes bad mainstream fiction.

[BookCat]

Katsunami is very much under-estimating youtube video makers. A lot of the high earning ones make a living at it. I have a few relaxation vids, under another pseudonym, but don't monetise them. So saying that they don't have 'real jobs' misses the point: often youtube IS their job.

I've seen many writing advice videos from men and from women who make a living from writing, such as The Creative Penn, a woman.

There was once a time when it was considered a disgrace for women to write, hence George Eliot using a male name, Austen publishing as "A Lady" and the Brontes as Currer, Acton and Ellis Bell. Educational opportunities and many professions were barred to women. Over the last thirty years we've been making up for this. When I was a child the idea of a female doctor or even television presenter was perverse to many.

So it seems reasonable that women should take their place in authorship. I don't doubt we're overtaking men; it's inevitable. Many men haven't read a book since leaving school.

I think peeps at MR assume the western world is as literate as we are. We're a self-selecting bunch. If you do another youtube search for booktubers (the ones who READ books) you'll also find a predominance of females. The men are probably down the pub or playing computer games.

I freely admit to being a biased post-feminist observer.

[Apache]

There are still a lot of men who only want to buy jewelry from a man. The only time they want a woman to wait on them is if she is young and good looking. Even then they still prefer to talk to a man when they get ready to make a purchase. Luckily they are mostly older men now and seem to be dying off.
Apache

[ZGottlieb]

You might also enjoy Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Retrieval Artist series. Its about a detective on the Moon.

[SteveEisenberg]

I'm guessing that most fiction is written by women and most non-fiction by men. In any event, looking at the last couple dozen titles on my finished-reading list, it's definitely that way for what I read.

Mobileread seems dominated by fiction readers. Nothing wrong with that.

As for whether there's harm in making broad generalizations about men and women, allowing they don't apply to all, well, I guess I'm going to have to plead guilty to a new word I learned in the second sentence of #14. While I'll never be an author, most good ones, at least until the last few decades, would also have to plead guilty. Here's an appreciation of one of my favorites -- someone whose novels are, in large measure, an effort to think about the differences between men and women:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...d-my-life.html

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

As for whether there's harm in making broad generalizations about men and women, allowing they don't apply to all, well, I guess I'm going to have to plead guilty to a new word I learned in the second sentence of #14. While I'll never be an author, most good ones, at least until the last few decades, would also have to plead guilty. Here's an appreciation of one of my favorites -- someone whose novels are, in large measure, an effort to think about the differences between men and women:

Heteronormative? I think this is the 4th time I've seen that word used and two of the other times were in polemics suggesting that not being totally non-supportive of a heterosexual orientation was a Bad Thing. I could find little in the preceding discussion that supported a heterosexual orientation. Misogyny? Probably. That men and women tend to have different reading preferences? That one is hard to argue though again, it's statistics and that famous quote on statistics, whomever may have originally said it, definitely applies.

That writing books that fit into more genres seems to be getting more popular? Hard to argue with that one. Romance/science fiction? On that one, I will differ with my wife -- I don't care if the story is set in space or a "alien planet". When the science part of science fiction is totally missing, it ain't science fiction. I compare this to books such as Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign and it's dedication to "Jane, Charlotte, Georgette, and Dorothy" which is, IMNSHO, both a tribute to Georgette Heyer and science fiction. Heck, I like the Nora Roberts/J. D. Robb's In Death series and it takes a effort at times not to toss my Kobo across the room when I read some of the space travel segments.

[hildea]

There's a lot to discuss here. I wanted to comment on this one:

Originally Posted by patrickt

The men complained of factual errors that ranged from mountains in at part of Wyoming that had no mountains to the army using DC-3s to fly people around the country. The men found the errors ruined the reading and the wife jumped up and raged, "None of that matters. It's the relationships that are important."

And she was absolutely right as a representative for women. Part of what I enjoyed about Tony Hillerman's books were the details about the Navajo life and culture. My wife read one of the books and had absolutely no interest in that. She was looking for relationships.

I don't agree at all that interest in factual details is gendered, either amoung authors or readers. But it might be that you don't recognise all types of research, because they are outside your own areas of interest or expertise. Some examples:

• Courtney Milan on inheritance laws in England during the Regency
• Mary Robinette Kowal on early 19th century hat decorations, codes during WW1, and orbital mechanics
• KJ Charles on Edwardian shooting parties
• Marie Brennan on fighting while wearing a victorian dress (with video)

Sure, anecdotal evidence isn't. But your example is anecdotal, too.

Originally Posted by Jane Austen's Persuasion

“But how shall we prove any thing?”
“We never shall. We never can expect to prove any thing upon such a point. It is a difference of opinion which does not admit of proof. We each begin probably with a little bias towards our own sex, and upon that bias build every circumstance in favour of it which has occurred within our own circle

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Clearly.


Not. I definitely believe it not. You mean like, "Poof?"

Of course not, but they do disappear. Want some proof?

Teachers in the Netherlands are over 87% female

Source: CBS (Central Bureau for Statistics)

The report(s) also explicitly states that "this is not a phenomenon unique to the Netherlands."

If I would go through the trouble, I could find you similar reports on HRM, nursing, vets, psychology... and so on. (On that last one, there's a recent report that states over 4000 (!) psychologists are graduating in the Netherlands, each year, over 80% of them being female.)

CBS is working and advising the government in the Netherlands, and it keeps statistics on basically everything. I assume they even keep statistics on the number of reports they produce.

Do you know how many female teachers *I* had between the ages of 6 and 20 (primary school, and two different levels in high school)? ONE. The one in first grade was a woman.

Then I went to study English, which I did for two years, and had a culture shock, because I basically didn't talk to a man older than 24 in two years. ALL teachers I had were women. 8 out of 10 students were female. After two years I switched to Computer Science (but not because of being swamped by women; there were other reasons). All of my teachers there were male, and in four years, I only met like... 3 or 4 female students. But, there also was and still is, a relentless push to get females to study computer science or any other technical profession, but there is no such campaign pressing for guys to pick up teaching, psychology, HRM... etc.

That's too funny (if it wasn't so patently false and sexist).

So yes, you might choose not to believe it, but it still wont change the stats. At least for some professions, the statistics tell that as soon as female participation in that profession exceeds 50%, it'll keep rising because no or very few 'new' men are entering the field.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by BookCat

Katsunami is very much under-estimating youtube video makers. A lot of the high earning ones make a living at it. I have a few relaxation vids, under another pseudonym, but don't monetise them. So saying that they don't have 'real jobs' misses the point: often youtube IS their job.

I've seen many writing advice videos from men and from women who make a living from writing, such as The Creative Penn, a woman.

Oh, I know about people making a living out of making YouTube video's. I don't mind that. I actually follow some of them on chess, go, and computer science... the difference is, they have all earned their pay, by actually having a GM chess master title, a GM Go title, one being one of the strongest amateurs around on Asian Go servers (so strong he can actually defeat lower level professionals), or being professors/teachers of CS at schools and university.

Most writing advice video's I've seen are made by people who (self)published one or less books, so I don't deem them to be authoritative and thus not useful.

[kyrilson]

This whole thread confuses me.

I could care less about the gender or race of an author. If the story is good, that's all that matters.

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by kyrilson

This whole thread confuses me.

I could care less about the gender or race of an author. If the story is good, that's all that matters.

I think the original poster posted because he/she noticed a majority of female author listings when checking the Cloud library and wondered if this was something Cloud has done on purpose. As is common on internet forums, the discussion went in another direction......

I expect most MobileRead members read books by both male and female authors and would agree that there have been plenty of good (and bad!) books written by both men and women.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

I think the original poster posted because he/she noticed a majority of female author listings when checking the Cloud library and wondered if this was something Cloud has done on purpose. As is common on internet forums, the discussion went in another direction......

I expect most MobileRead members read books by both male and female authors and would agree that there have been plenty of good (and bad!) books written by both men and women.

Indeed.

Personally I don't care if a book is written by a man or a woman. I _do_ care and dislike it when female authors (or any other profession for that matter) are pushed and/or over-represented at the expense of men in the name of 'compensating for the past' and 'equalization.' The reason I dislike it, is that there are very few movements that do the same for men in female dominated professions. That is a whole different topic, however.

[kyrilson]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Indeed.

Personally I don't care if a book is written by a man or a woman. I _do_ care and dislike it when female authors (or any other profession for that matter) are pushed and/or over-represented at the expense of men in the name of 'compensating for the past' and 'equalization.' The reason I dislike it, is that there are very few movements that do the same for men in female dominated professions. That is a whole different topic, however.

This irritates me too. I think work should stand on its own merit and shouldn't have to rely on others to push it onto others due to perceived past inequalities.