Try this with The Best Articles of 2010: Go down the list, and say out loud to yourself the gender of each writer as you go. You’ll say: man, man, man, man, man, woman, man, woman, woman, man, man, man, man.
Try it with Give Me Something to Read‘s Best Magazine Articles of 2010: woman, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man.
Try it with the front page of longform.org: man, woman, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, woman and two men, woman.
Try it with the table of contents of The Best American Magazine Writing 2010: woman, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, woman, man, man, two men and a woman, man, man, man.
Try it with the table of contents of The Best American Travel Writing 2011: man, man, man, man, man, woman, man, man, man, man, woman, woman, man, woman, woman, man, man, woman.
You get the picture.
Let’s just get all this context out of the way, since I wonder if it has simply become background noise, if it will have any further shock value after the initial surge of anger has steadily trickled back to complacency: Last spring, VIDA - an organization “founded in August 2009 to address the need for female writers of literature to engage in conversations regarding the critical reception of women’s creative writing in our current culture” - tallied male and female bylines in the country’s top magazines, concluding that men are published at dramatically higher rates than women (in 2010, at The New Yorker, there were 449 male bylines and 163 female; at Harper’s, 94 male and 25 female; at The New York Review of Books, 306 male and 59 female; at The London Review of Books, 343 male and 74 female). In an analysis for Maisonneuve, Madeline Coleman argued that magazine profiles of women tend to be written by men and to contrast a woman’s femaleness with her success. The International Women’s Media Foundation found that only a third of journalists worldwide are women, and that 73% of management jobs in journalism are held by men. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Professor Carla Almeida Santos conducted a study which found that male travel writers tend to take men for granted and to describe women in terms of physical attractiveness, pitting, in academese, a “constructed femininity” against a “normative masculinity”. Mother Jones reported that a third of the stories written by women in 2010 were on gender and family, or were fiction or memoirs.
Congratulations! These conditions spill far beyond the writing domain, but are certainly blatantly conspicuous in the arts, a persisting bastion of the “good ol’ boys club.” We women probably do need to make a little more noise in advocating for and promoting our craft/profession. It remains, however, as you suggested, a precarious task. Good for you, Sarah, for taking action!
[...] her “Written by Women” manifesto announcing the new site, editor Sarah Menkedick collects her own data: Try this with The [...]
[...] and Amanda Giracca. Sarah is the one who brought us all together; here’s an excerpt from her explanation of the project (and specifically, why it’s “written by women”): The point here is not that this [...]
Wow this is some pretty phenomenal talent to have gathered together in one place. I’ll be reading and reading…
Hello. Not sure if you’ve seen it but you’d probably be interested in Lady Journos.
Hi Richard,
I love Lady Journos, thanks! It’s a great site.
[...] just to do our own thing. “Written by Women”—check out Sarah’s spot-on manifesto for further [...]
good on y’all for starting this. sweet.
Thanks Dahveed! Glad you came over to check it out.
What a fantastic idea – I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this.
It’s about time — best of luck with this. I’ll be reading!
Congratulations! I look forward to reading your stories. The voice, perspective and opinion of women need to be heard, and it is high time, indeed!
Best Wishes,
Alex Ivory
Dovetail travel in peace