Women and Fantasy

The Nebula nominees are out and while I haven't read any of them it does seem to have a preponderance of fantasy. It also has more women authors nominated than men ( a first I think). The two things seem to go together. While women are sadly under-represented in F & SF where they are present it is mostly on the Fantasy side. Why is that?

While I strongly disagree with the Larry Summer's suggestion that women are inherently poorer at STEM subjects it does seem that they have a dislike of them. The science in SF is often not real science, space warps and wormholes are speculative in the extreme, so one could put in any old rubbish to explain things just as Star Trek did (the dilithium crystals are warping the tachyon flux, Captain), but women still don't go for it. I think it's a good assumption that women read more F than SF. So what about it do they dislike?

Correction: The 2010 Nebula nominations had more women than men. That was probably a first.

It's hard to say how much of it is just a self-reinforcing cultural cycle. Women don't read/write SF so... women don't read/write SF.

I think that there is are a lot of romance novels masquerading as fantasy. Now, I doubt sincerely than any of the Nebula nominees are of the romance ilk, it is still a possible reason why there are more women reading and, as a result, writing, fantasy. I might be wrong, but I don't know any men who read romance novels.

Women have been traditionally underrepresented in the science and technology fields although this is changing rapidly. That might explain why there is less so-called "hard" sci-fi being written by women. But it does not explain why women would be underrepresented in other types of science fiction, such as sociological science fiction. Perhaps they are not--without seeing the statistics it is hard to say.

I can tell you that as woman who reads sci-fi, I am sometimes turned off by the lack of women characters or the shallow portrayal of women characters. Same thing goes for the Western genre.

It's not true that women don't read sf - a lot of them do. I've even seen it claimed they form more than half of the sf market. Women also write a lot of sf - see SF Mistressworks and Daughters of Prometheus - but they do find it harder to get published at novel-length. No one knows why, though lots of people will suggest it's because it doesn't sell (not true - eg, Lois McMaster Bujold, Connie Willis, Mary Gentle, etc) or it's not good enough (not true, gets nominated for & wins plenty of awards - eg, Connie Willis, Justina Robson, Gwneth Jones, etc). However, what is certainly true is that sf by women writers is neither reported on, reviewed nor discussed as often as sf written by men. Strange Horizons crunched the numbers last year, and it made for dismal reading...

And really, it's the 21st century, we shouldn't be having this "women like fantasy", "women don't like science" conversation any more. It's rubbish, it's always been rubbish. Girls are discouraged from studying sciences just as much as boys are encouraged to study them, and it's all down to stupid perceived gender roles and has no basis in ability, biology, neurochemistry, psychology or anything else. Perpetuating the myth is only perpetuating the problem.

And yes, I have been known to read romance.

You rock, Iansales. If I ever said anything negative about you, I take it back.

One current big fad in YA books is surfing on the "Hunger Games" or "Divergent" wave, and lots of girls or young women do read that.
They often lean too much toward the "romance with a dystopian background" for my own tastes, not to mention a certain uniformity of traits that YA publishers seem to deem fit to select for and that don't really make my day as a reader.
But it still shows that women will read sf-nal stories, just like they've been reading fantasy-themed ones.

Some of them will branch out into reading the wider genres their YA reads borrow from.
For that it'll probably help if they can find stories which don't, for all their otherwise possibly dazzling inventiveness and vision, relegate their fictional peers to invisibility, subservience, necessary villainy of any "active" and powerful female figure, unquestioning projection into the far future (as supposedly universal truth) of real-life gender roles that are rather social constructions of some parts of the world and some eras, etc...
The Foundation series was sort of fun in my unquestioning early teens, but I'd probably have dropped the whole genre like a dead toad a few years later if I hadn't found by then much more intriguing fare regarding what women (or just, people, regardless of whether born with a womb or not) could be in universes of expanded scope and possibilities.

#7 My work here is done* :-)

(*sigh. If only that were really true... But thanks for the vote of confidence)

#6 We're having the discussion because the disparity still exists and I would like to know why. There is a big movement to attract women to STEM subjects and there are iconic women scientists like Lisa Randall and Caroline Porco (to name but two) who are prominent in the media but I'm not sure it's having an impact. So while I agree that women are equally as able at science as men I am not sure that they do like it. Something is turning them off and I think it's important to find what it is and counter it. The world needs more women scientists and engineers.
That wasn't my point of my post. Writing fiction is open to all. I wasn't aware that there was a bias against publishing women in SF but if you take the Nebula awards they are outnumbering men in the success to be garnered from it. Most of the winning novels, however, are like Glamour in Glass or The Killing Moon than Bitter Angels or War Surf. Maybe it's a bias on the part of those nominating the Nebulas but it's an interesting statistic.
I'm currently doing a reading challenge on the World's Without End website called Women of Genre Fiction. The idea is to read 12 women's authors in the Fantasy, SF or Horror genres that you haven't read before by the end of the year. As a result they have been putting hundreds of women authors in their database many I have never come across before. Most of them are in the Fantasy field. I'm not sure the proportion that's in the horror field I suspect it's less than SF though. I would like to read more women authors but I'm not that much of a fantasy reader and yes several of the fantasy offerings seem more like romance novels disguised.

#4 I like your point about the lack of strong women characters. The "classic" SF novels were abysmal in that regard. I think that has changed however. It's hard to write a strong male character without it seeming a parody and strong female protagonists are much more interesting. Pullman's Lyra Belacqua is a case in point.

No, we're having the conversation because some people believe the disparity still exists. If you go looking for sf by women writers, you will find plenty of it. If you look at the women writers on the Nebula novel shortlist, you'll find most of them write sf short fiction. Like this one from Mary Robinette Kowal: http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/im-44-today-have-a-novelette-as-a-part...

Why writers like Kowal can only get fantasy novels published is an entirely different question...

I'm aware of World Without End. They've been supportive of SF Mistressworks. But a crowd-sourced list of women writers is only going to produce a list of women fantasy writers because of, you know, exactly what I've been saying above. Check out http://sfmistressworks.wordpress.com/ for proof that women have been writing sf since 1818, and continue to write sf - and that their contribution to the genre has been criminally neglected.

You seem to be missing the forest for the trees, Ian. Let's go back the the foundation of this thread: women are sadly under-represented. This isn't "there is no SF by women." That would be a stupid thing to posit, but no one did.

If I say "why are women so sadly under-represented in the ranks of Fortune 500 CEOs?" and you say "look, I can name dozens of women CEOs in the Fortune 500", you haven't really disproven the point, have you?

And you're looking at the male trees and not seeing the female ones. There's plenty of sf by women writers, lots of it. They're not "sadly under-represented". They are only under-represented in your (and others) view of sf. This is neither unusual nor unexpected. But it does need to change. Look for sf by women writers and you will find it. Just because you can't see it, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

If women who wish to write SF novels can only get Fantasy novels published then I would say the disparity does still exist although it's cause would be different. Do you have any examples of them being pressured to publish Fantasy against their wishes? I noticed that Sarah Zettel normally published Fantasy novels but her SF novel Bitter Angels was published as C. L. Anderson but many women don't adopt aliases nowadays; Elizabeth Bear, Elizabeth Moon, Mary Buckner, and Kathleen Anne Goonan managed to publish regular SF novels. In what way are they different or is this just a marketing thing, Fantasy sells better than SF?

Yes, fantasy sells better than sf. About 7:1 is the figure normally bandied about. People publish under pseudonyms (not just women) often because they can't sell books under the names they've used before. For every Megan Lindholm who chose to use a pseudonym to distinguish her different works (Robin Hobb), there's one whose name is a category killer so they have to use a pen-name for new work.

I'm not saying there's pressure on women to submit fantasy novels in preference to sf, just that there's a perception - mistaken, of course :-) - that sf by women writers does not sell and so is not worth publishing. I set up SF Mistressworks partly to disprove this.

#13 by @iansales> I wish you could step back from your soapbox long enough to do a little math.

But I think it's a lost cause from other discussions so I'll leave you to it while I get some reading done.

I've done the maths (as we say here). There are a ton of sf books by women writers. Go look for them. Yes, I have a soapbox, but I have good reason for it.

7:1! I didn't realise it was that high. That's sad. I started reading SF when I was 11 (I still remember the book A Fall of Moondust) and this gave me a love of science that I have to this day. Most scientists you talk to read SF when they were young and it had a major influence on them taking up science. Perhaps the prevalence of fantasy is the cause of the anti-science attitude on both sides of the political spectrum and the wide-spread belief that reality can be changed by willpower alone.

#17 by @iansales> There are a ton of sf books by women writers.

Again you strenuously argue a counterpoint to a point no one is making.

I know I'm only one female, but I like hard SF. I read hard SF. I write SF on occasion and it's generally hard SF. While I took way more humanities classes than required, my degree is in electrical engineering from UCLA, specialty microelectronics. While I've played fantasy MMO's, largely because those games are most often fantasy, attempts to read fantasy novels convinced me I'm not fond of the genre.

And I'll rally behind iansales. Not so much because he is male but because he got here and posted first and has a history of reading and reviewing women's SF that puts me to shame.

p.s. one of my favorite Mars colonization books is written by a female: Red Genesis by S. C. Sykes

So what is it about hard SF you like and what about fantasy do you dislike?

So what is it about hard SF you like and what about fantasy do you dislike?

In SF, I really like seeing how someone extrapolates science and technology and what they do with it. I like it when it illuminates unexpected consequences, detailed thinking about expected consequences, or just wraps a good yarn around it all. I like reading about people dealing in realistic terms with problems we haven't yet faced today. I read a lot about real science and technology and think a lot myself about where it could go, so I like reading about where someone else thinks it might go.

What I found I disliked about the fantasy I've encountered is that it's about people dealing with the types of problems of the real or imagined past - long trips, traditional fighting and espionage, quests and proving oneself to someone or for some cause. They are adventure stories with maybe a fantastical twist or two put in. For me, repetitive and a bit boring.

To add another datapoint, albeit second hand, my wife is a poster girl for women in STEM: BS degrees in physics and astronomy and a PhD in astrophysics who is now a college professor.

She wasn't a big recreational reader when we started reading (long story about misguided elementary school teachers who bullied students into read books over the summer). Anyway, when we started dating I tried to find some stuff she'd like. The only thing she'd managed to finish since grade school was Harry Potter. She loved those (still does - she's read them all many many times).

The main books I've managed to get her interested in are The Peace War, Marooned in Realtime, Manifold: Space, Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide. I think she may have read the His Dark Materials trilogy as well.

The thing I dislike about most fantasy is the lack of constraints. With magic you can do anything, it's one big deus ex machina.

#19, from the original post which started the thread: While women are sadly under-represented in F & SF where they are present it is mostly on the Fantasy side.

Isn't the problem, though, that male readers generally have prejudices against female authors and especially female SF authors, while female readers generally have no such prejudices? This leads to female SF selling worse, which makes the ever so cautious/cowardly publishers shy away from publishing SF by women, which reinforces the prejudices etc in a vicious circle?

#14 - that's odd because fools war was published as Zettel is distinctly SF and very good. I'll have to look our for bitter angels.

#26 Yes, that's what's generally believed, and is why many female authors used non-gender-specific names, such as CJ Cherryh. It's been suggested that Robin Hobb has been so successful because her name could be male. I've heard of men who won't read anything written by a woman, but I think they're only a small minority, and perhaps even smaller in genre fiction. Certainly no one I know is like that.

I actually think the situation is over-inflated. People think that so they're less likely to publish women sf writers. Certainly women sf writers are reviewed and discussed much less than men, and there's no good reason for that. Because women sf writers' profiles are generally lower, people think they're not read as much, so they rationalise it by saying men don't read books by women...

#26, #28

I think I remember a story of someone seeing a guy pick up a free book and then put it down once he realised it was was written by a woman. But I would hope such things are very rare.

I also think Ian is on the money when he says it is all about exposure. People can find old threads on LT (and of course Ian's SF Mistressworks) where people have tried to redress the balance.

You can't ignore history. Women are late to the bookwriting and publishing party, just as they have been in most fields of endeavor "outside of the home." Those who did write and publish used male pseudonyms (George Eliot, James Tiptree, off the top of my head) for a very good reason.

So logically, if you go back to the beginning of time, there is going to be proportionately less published writing by women. I am sure that this has increased exponentially in the last 30 or 40 years, and continues to increase. Without hard numbers, it is just speculation as to the ratio of women to men published today and in what genres.

I didn't know that fantasy outsold sci-fi, let alone to the degree stated here. I guess that would be a good reason to publish fantasy! It boggles my mind that romance of the Harlequin variety, and other sorts of potboilers and bodice rippers sell so well. But a writer's got to eat--regardless of gender.

#30 Actually, the reverse is true. And don't forget that for every George Eliot, there was also Jane Austen, Mary Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, etc. In the proto-sf days, when "scientific romances" were published in family-oriented magazines, they were often as not written by women - Frances Stevens,Margaret Prescott, Leslie Francis Stone, Hazel Heald, etc. It was only when Gernsback lost control of his magazines, and the publishers who took them over repositioned sf as a pulp genre - ie, aimed at male readers - that women sf writers gradually saw themselves frozen out.

Then, when paperbacks started to be sold through surpermarkets in the 1960s, the number of women sf readers greatly increased, and this ushered in a wave of women sf writers, from Le Guin to Gotlieb to Zimmer Bradley, etc. It's only since the 1980s that the number of women sf writers has declined, and there's no good reason for it. Women sf writers have continued to win awards since then - during the late 1980s, Bujold was on just about every Hugo novel shortlist.

Perhaps it was gradual amalgamation of all the imprints which did it. Publishing used to be a low-margin business, but once the multinationals got involved they demanded a 15% profit all the time. So the accountants took charge. And if they felt, however erroneously, that women didn't read sf then they would happily make sure no women sf writers were published. Much like, so rumour has it, the WH Smith chief buyer during the 1990s didn't think sf by women sold, and so refused to stock it.

While I could see SF readers of Asimov's generation (who were mostly spotty boys with poor social skills) not wanting to read "girly" books I think we have moved far beyond that now. I do think the portrayal violence might be a turn off to women in some type of SF. I like gory stuff and Big Dumb Objects being blown up, my wife not so much.

On the romance front - one of the biggest-selling romance writers in the UK was male, but wrote under a female pen-name: Emma Blair. It's also my understanding that most romance novels are written for a flat fee, which is why so many romance authors are so prolific.

#31 This may be a misperception but there seems to be a number of smaller print house springing up. Do you think this will change the landscape of SF publishing to any degree or is it following in the footsteps of the poetry market?

>31 iansales:. I'd like to see the actual numbers. I find it hard to believe that women do and have always constituted 51% of published authors in sci-fi, fantasy or anywhere else. This would be such a departure from every other field outside the home (with the exception of nursing and teaching) that it would be an historical anomaly.

I have James Triptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips sitting on my TBR pile. Perhaps that will shed some light.

#34 Small presses have always been around, but they're certainly picking up the slack more and more. Now that library sales have fallen through the floor, some of them are now bringing out collectible hardback editions of books published as paperbacks by the major genre imprints.

#35 The introduction to New Eves maintains that an influx of women writers in the mid-1960s saw them dominate the magazines for a while, but I don't know what numbers they're basing that on. I know someone who says they have figures to demonstrate that female genre readers outnumber male, but I believe that also includes YA.

#33. I remember an acquaintance of mine (named "Jessica" as she was the daughter of Dune fans) who was working on her Phd in genetics. She started writing romance novels for extra cash, and last I heard ended up doing that for a living instead of pursuing her field as a researcher or academic. Romance novel writing must be lucrative!

#36 I can readily accept that women genre readers outnumber males. That fits with what I perceive with my own eyes and ears. Obviously, statistics could prove me wrong. But I think that when it comes to women writers my perception is the opposite. Again, I could be proven wrong. But to take the stance that in the 21st Century we no longer have to talk about gender disparity, and to ignore the fact that it ever existed in the publishing industry or elsewhere could be seen as akin to some sort of "sexism denial."

We definitely need to talk about it. If anything, the disparity is greater now than it used to be. (Which sort of fits into my theory that the 20th century was just one big social experiment that our lords and masters have now decided is over :-))

I do hope that the 20th Century was not just an isolated period of social evolution. But it is frightening to look at the demographic shifts toward backward customs and beliefs. We've got to get more people reading, indeed more GIRLS reading, if we hope to overcome this slide. We need more books like Who Fears Death, not only written by women, but written by women outside of western european culture.

One of the issues in the past were editors and publishers. More than once, female authors with unambiguous female names were asked to use a pseudonym because the editor thought that readers would avoid stories and books written by women. And women writers, wanting to be paid and published just as much as males, complied. So, perception, rather than reality, governs these matters.

I would just like to note that this topic is misleading - there is not a single instance of anyone's fantasy about women or what women fantasize about !

I work in a comic store, and I often run across (older male) readers who avoid anything written by a woman. A few are really adamant about it, while others can be convinced to read books by women but wouldn't pick them up without strong recommendations. It's a harder sell to get comics by women into readers' hand. It's easy to imagine the same thing happens with male scifi readers, but I have less direct experience with it.

I had the same experience as a librarian recommending books -- but it *has* improved. It was much more prevalent 36 years ago (when I started) than recently. Both female readers of SF, and people willing to read female authors of same, have become more common than the old pattern.

Just came across a Joanna Russ book I hadn't known of: How to Suppress Women's Writing. The cover says it all.

#44. Interesting! Just added it to my wish list. Thanks.

Note: the following is MY experience, and not an effort to generalize:

I have had a shockingly hard time getting readers to check out Sarah Zettel's SF, which IMO, is brilliant...the fact her SF titles are so under recognized blows my mind.

Publishers STILL encourage women to use gender neutral bylines, even in fantasy - Note: J. K. Rowlings N. K. Jemison. Once the books are successful, then it is considered 'safe' to let the gender of the author be known.

I feel the problem (regarding fantasy in particular) has not gotten better - but far, far worse - since the emergence of paranormal romance and heavily romance slanted urban fantasy - the flood of such books (I am NOT saying such books should not be appreciated by their intended audience!) but the massive influx of out and out romance into the genre has further stigmatized those women who do NOT write such themes into their work.

For every generalization that women are underrecognized, there are striking exceptions: Lois McMaster Bujold, Catherine Valente.

The fantasy that does not follow the cookie cutter formula (and is written by women without a gender neutral byline) about always goes under the radar - there are plenty of books with great depth and adult perspective, but they often get lost under the avalance of what is 'poplular'. It can take up to ten years for such works to be noticed at all, and it's not likely they stay in print long enough to reach their potential audience. Of particular note: Rosemary Kirstein.

The very best indicator of a work's audience - whether written by a male or female author - is THE READERSHIP. Given the transparency of certain book cataloguing sites, it is very easy to see whether any title has a balanced gender readership. Some books are read mostly by males, some by mostly females, but there are titles read by BOTH, and to me, that is a far more accurate indicator of a work's orientation toward its intended audience than the sex of the writer.

The point, that such books (with a gender balanced readership), should never be stereotyped by the gender of the author is almost never, ever addressed....a great pity, IMO, since some books are deliberately aligned for a gender biased audience, one way or another, and are successful in that regard.

It's the knee-jerk prejudice without looking at the readership (when it is balanced) that sets my hair on fire, as that FACTUAL BASIS would separate the sheep from the wolves.

If there were no bias left, today, there would be no women publishing under gender neutral pseudonyms/or women forced to change their names to salvage their careers.

I expected the day to come (in my lifetime) when I ceased to have to endure the glazed over look when people who did not read SF/F asked what I do - the shut down (due to prejudice) on the moment they found that I wrote genre work. I expected that prejudice to evolve and go away. I did NOT EVER IMAGINE I'd have to (today) add the searingly embarrassing disclaimer - that my work contained ADULT CONCEPTS, not ROMANCE, because I was a woman author.

It's gotten that bad, people, in the field and out, IN MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE - and it makes me very annoyed.

#44 How To Suppress Women's Writing should be required reading.

#45 Rosemary Kirstein is great. There's been a clear decline since the turn of the century, and if the situation is bad in the US, it's worse in the UK. Especially for science fiction. I think the only female sf writer currently in contract in the UK with a major imprint is Justina Robson. There are a few with Angry Robot and Solaris, and Del Rey UK is bringing out some US reprints - Kameron Hurley and EJ Swift - in a few months. It's this situation which prompted me to set up SF Mistressworks, and that then inspired a friend to start Daughters of Prometheus. There was an attempt at a fantasy equivalent, but it foundered.

Thank you for sharing your experiences and perspective, Janny. Together with having just discovered the 2013 Worlds Without End Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge (thanks, justifiedsinner), and doubly troubled by accounts by you and Ian, I've partitioned some works I own by lesser-known women authors and just began reading Salt of the Air by Vera Nazarian. My, she's a wonderful writer!

#47 Don't forget Jaine Fenn- published by Gollancz. Not least because she's a member here!

#47 Ian Sales, applause for your perspective! As an aside, I'd never read How to Suppress Women's Writing - it would make me beyond angry.

#48 psybre - I looked at the Worlds Without End Challenge you linked with enthusiastic interest - and to be frank, got ticked again. (not at you! Just the general state of affairs)

I would be a LOT more impressed IF the database for Worlds Without End (again, this is from my PERSONAL perspective!) showed me (accurately!) as a woman (career spanning three decades!) author of THE OTHER FIFTEEN TITLES I've published through major venues, many still in print today, and with more in the pipeline - let me reveal that a search of my name uncovered that the Word Without End database included ONLY (and this did appall me, all over again!!!) the three titles I've done in collaboration with a MALE author/which were NOT my debut, but were written AFTER four other of my own books were already in print. For a database (World Without End) that claims to be promoting non-biased opinion on female authors - what on earth am I to conclude?

And if a search of my name brought up only those three titles, and the others are there (but hidden) what on earth am I to conclude about what else is omitted, re, other female authors with a full career in progress?

No apologies for the rant/frankly, my hair's on fire all over again!

#49 Jaine's contract with Gollancz finished with Queen of Nowhere.

>50 JannyWurts: Yes, the World Without End database of titles is far from complete. Just as an example, missing are Zelazny's "Damnation Alley" and "Creatures of Light and Darkness" and "Roadmarks" and dozens of other works not currently "in print" and that weren't nominated for a major award. Missing is Slonczewski's "Still Forms on Foxfield" et cetera. As a reader, I have very mixed feelings about a site that is "dedicated to identifying, reading and sharing the best Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror novels the genre has to offer. We don't want you to ever have to read a bad book again." Pshaw. I'll stick with LibraryThing & ISFDB.

World Without End has supported SF Mistressworks, and for that I'm grateful. But ISFDB is far more complete, and I'm a little annoyed at WWE's policy of linking genre awards on Wikipedia to its site and not to the actual website for the award.

#52 and #53 - for complete listings (I have been astounded at the accuracy) for Fantasy, I look at www.fantasyliterature.com

I'm less cranky today (headcold in retreat really helps) - the overall good is that there has been an effort to make this listing, and it does have some women authors listed that could so easily have been overlooked. Credit where due - :) - Kristine Smith, R. M. Meluch and Karen Lowachee were not left out - yay for that.

But leaving out Janet Morris???? Whew! Grin. My hair (the patch that isn't crisped) stands on end to imagine the scathing rant she'd have on the omission. That lady speaks her mind with the direct precision of a razor, and she doesn't need a headcold to set her off. She's got a huge list of titles to her name, too, and not insignificant ones.

With all due respect, somebody friendly might want to warn the site that the lack of her name is a glaring omission. (and no, Jan Morris is NOT the same author).

If I had a buck for every editor who suggested (probably to a lot of other women authors, too) that I should stop writing work with adult concepts/plots with a degree of complexity and just write some YA, 'where the action is' - the kitty would be stuffed. Many moved that direction. Many more were forced to re-start their careers under new names, the length of that list is appalling. Last month when I read what was bought in LOCUS magazine, it was shocking to see how very MANY were YA titles/urban fantasy - and how shocking few were names I even recognized.

I've never been one to harp on gender issues, before - I've preferred to scotch my own dogs on my own merits, on my own turf, under my real name, no matter what arena of life. But the fact (lately) things are turning for the worse/and worse yet, have given 'rise' to a whole new wave of 'political correctness' that throws another (not always for the good) spin on top of other twisted forms of polarization - hasn't shifted the hypocrisy equation for the better.

I am annoyed to STILL be seeing this barrier - if anyone does not believe it exists, I would urge them to examine the recent data (yes, with musicians) regarding hiring women for positions in symphony orchestras - and the CLEAR DIFFERENCE in what happens if the auditions are blind and the ones determining do not see the sex of performer auditioning. More women achieve positions in cities that hold blind auditions.

Ask Why Anne McCaffrey and Andre Norton and Marion Zimmer Bradley are not mentioned in the same breath as Asimov and Heinlein? Whatever you may think of their work, they were, all three, trendsetters. Check my facts, but I believe Anne McCaffrey WAS the first sf/f author to make the NY Times list with Moreta?

To be fair to WWE it is a small site with only 1 or 2 people working on it part time. It can't compare with LT which is 40% owned by Amazon. Their initial focus was on Award winners in SF and Fantasy but in an effort to expand their users they have added horror and many more women authors for the challenge. One reason they are so slow in adding books (apart from the small number of people involved) is that they do not allow users to add their own books. They are apparently working on new software which will allow this.

#54 Janny, I think you're preaching to the converted here. We know the situation is bad and getting worse, and we're trying to do our bit to help. Happily, there has been some improvement in awards shortlists in the last couple of years - see this year's Nebula Awards novel shortlist, for example. That's come out of the conversation about women genre writers that's been taking place over the last couple of years. But it's far from perfect - see this year's BSFA Award shortlist. And the fight is ongoing.

#47 Janet Edwards at Harper Voyager? Young adult SF. ( Earth Girl and I thought more on contract).

I think the situation which Janny and Ian have outlined is unknown to most SF fans who are in not so closely involved in the business. So it is invaluable to have people like yourselves comment on this sorry state. So much of the debate over publishing has involved the move to electronic distribution that gender discrimination seems to be getting overlooked.

#57 Yes, there's Janet, though like you say her book is YA - but the YA market is much stronger, and more equal in terms of gender than "adult" sf.

#55 by @justifiedsinner> It can't compare with LT which is 40% owned by Amazon.

That's really got nothing to do with any of this.

If you are comparing WWE to LT which some people have then I think it is. WWE does not have anything like the resources that LT has (and if you think the connection with Amazon has nothing to do with money you are on a different planet).
The WoGF initiative has been going on for 2 months and they have added more books (90%+ by women authors) than they did in the whole of the last year. And it's an ongoing process. The members are putting in requests for books and women's authors and they are struggling to keep up. There is nothing to stop any female author asking for her books to be included or for any of her fans to do so.

#61 by @justifiedsinner> If you think it has anything to do with LT's "connection" with amazon, you haven't followed the history of that deal very well.

Abe Books bought that stake in LT. Amazon later bought Abe Books. LT didn't get any additional money from that, and from everything Tim has posted he wishes it'd never happened. And, as stated, it's 40% not 51+%. Tim has stated time and again that he owns over 50% of the stock and has taken an public "over my dead body" stance on losing control of LT.

It also didn't get LT any more preferential treatment from Amazon, leaving them shackled by following Amazon's general API TOS. A TOS that LT's competitors flauted, I might add. Instead, LT continued to abide by those terms and used the public API that every other Amazon-connected website can use.

So, no extra resources and no preferential treatment. Unless you think Tim is a liar. What benefit would this "connection" be giving them, then, in your eyes? Just trying to get our planets to align. :D

ETA: This isn't to say LT has no more moolah than WWE. I'll heartily admit that this is true. For one thing, it has a commercial product to keep it afloat (LTFL). But it has zilch to do with Amazon. It could have been just about any investor and been the same. Tim has, however, been pretty successful in convincing various other companies/institutions to team up with LT in neat ways.

I'm quite aware that the initial investment was from Abe Books , the point is it has outside investors, CIG is another one. WWE has none. That was the point.

#50 JannyWurts, I'm sorry that you don't care for our reading challenge but perhaps you might spend more than a few minutes researching it before you neg it on a public forum. If you had, you would have read about how we came up with the idea as a way to promote women authors while also improving the gender imbalance of our site. We've been open and honest with our mea culpa about the sad state of our coverage of women authors and publicly set forth our goals for the challenge and the site which include the addition of any authors and books requested by our members and challenge participants. We felt the need to do something and thought this would be a fun and constructive way to raise awareness within our sphere of influence. Strange that that would tick you off.

As you mentioned, and as many people like to point out, we don't have as many books or authors as LT or Goodreads or ISFDB or name your favorite genre fiction resource here but the gaps in our data are the result of limited time and resources, the fact that we built the site around the big awards and best of lists to get it going in the first place and a lack of knowledge of women authors in general - not the result of some kind of he-man-woman-haters-club agenda. Did I mention that this is a fan site built by 4 guys with families and day jobs and not a paying business? WWEnd is a labor of love that we work on in our spare time because we love genre fiction and we have awesome support and help from our members who appreciate the effort.

If you're concerned that we don't have all your books you could have just emailed us and made a request. We love to hear from authors directly and we've worked with many in the past to update bios and add more books etc. and we'd welcome the chance to work with you in the same way.

WWEnd is never going to be perfect but don't throw the baby out with the bath water. I can't help but feel our goals should align with your obvious desire to see women treated equally and I believe that those of us who wish to address the problem of gender inequity in the genre world aren't well served by attacking one another.

#52 psybre, so you like the WoGF Reading Challenge but our goal to help people find the best books disturbs you? Not sure what to make of that. Are you concerned we have some nefarious agenda? That we're trying to set ourselves up as "gatekeepers" or something? Is it because we don't have every book there is? I'm really curious.

Just to be clear, we don't actually pick the books or authors that we cover on our site. We follow the awards, 13 at present with more on the way, and the best of lists like the previously mentioned SF Mistressworks, Guardian, NPR etc. When we want to add a new list to cover some aspect of genre fiction that we're weak in we seek out the best of the established lists. If they don't exist we go looking for authorities in the field to help us create them like we did with the Baen Military SF or the Nightmare Magazine Top 100. Nobody would pay any attention to "Dave's List of Awesome Reads". If we get a non-specific reqeust for a particular author then we'll pick a series from that author which we have been doing a lot lately for the WoGF. Often we'll grab the books that show up the most in my RSS feeds cause those usually turn out to be shortlisted for the awards later anyway.

As for reviews, those are all member generated. Where we do pick is from the available awards and lists that are out there. We can't put them all in at once so we have to pick and choose based on what our members want and what we have time for. We try to offer a wide variety of both to keep things balanced. We're never going to make everyone happy but we do try our best to be fair and objective.

I don't read alot of SF or Fantasy, as anyone who looks at my library can see. So I can't really speak to the male/female issue. But, I could be inspired to read more by

22> seeing how someone extrapolates science and technology and what they do with it. I like it when it illuminates unexpected consequences, detailed thinking about expected consequences, or just wraps a good yarn around it all. I like reading about people dealing in realistic terms with problems we haven't yet faced today.

But it seems to me the old quote about any tech sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic applies here, therefore I also agree with this;

24> The thing I dislike about most fantasy is the lack of constraints. With magic you can do anything, it's one big deus ex machina.

It could also apply to SF, male or female author.

#64 icowdave - let me first step back and apologize immediately - that I carelessly lent the impression of panning the concept of a challenge to get readers interested in female authors - YES! Kudos to you all for initiating the idea, and yes, for setting the spotlight on the issue. I quite failed to give you the applause you deserved, without reservation for the effort.

Let me also say - kudos - since I know that most sites like WWE are done by enthusiasts as a labor of love in their free time. It's easy to see why my rant lent the impression I may have been attacking your site - the lack of a full explanation on my part wasn't fair.

The rant was actually not leveled at your site, but at the common state of awareness on the internet - in total - that the 'known facts' tend to keep getting repeated and the imbalance resists change because the buried facts stay buried and the slants continue with a persistence that is extremely difficult to reverse. (awards lists/best of lists replicate the same LACK of info),

My rant intended to blister for THIS, which is a general state of affairs: that Readers can't add to knowledge they can't find - and when the 'existing' knowledge is sparse on the ground, the internet listings tend to keep on omitting the same things. You at WWE and a few are working to change that, and no question, and your hard work and your hearts are in the right place.

Nothing's perfect, and intent matters/the fact such sites exist at all is a benefit to readers and authors alike.

This said: sites that are grotesquely imbalanced are the NORM. (and on the scale, yours is more balanced than most) I see bias omissions all the time, grumble in private, and shrug. If I ran off into cyberspace trying to correct them all, (there are THOUSANDS) I'd have no life, and spend a lot of time unhappy/and waste a lot of effort better spent on original creativity.

NOTHING'S PERFECT even among those cited as 'authorities' - LT itself fails to list all my published works and ISFDB, while astonishing in its "almost" completeness, totally boggled me for listing a short story NOT by me (admittedly not confirmed/with byline name mis-spelled) as published in 1997, in a publication called Odyssey, ?? (also, OMG, :P - said with HUMOR! - with a ridiculously embarrassing title!!! Wow.....holy mackerel scary, did somebody write THAT something/who knows what, as a would-be impersonator?!!!??? I've never heard of Odyssey as a publication/nor seen reference to that story - Now I wonder what was IN that story, falsely attributed to me - do you see how crazy-making just LOOKING at such internet databases can become?

Such omissions and inconsistencies are merely a reflection of the CURRENT GENERAL STATE OF AWARENESS, and it is evolving, hopefully for the better/and helped on by your efforts, and no question.

I'd had a hope (read MY OWN false expectation) that a site attached to a women author oriented reading challenge crying for change would have been a little closer to reflecting an accurate balance - and it WAS - note my subsequent, more careful post marking the fact certain authors were listed I'd not expected to find.

I was harsh with my disappointment (of finding no listing of my solo work/ ironically finding ONLY those novels in collaboration with a MALE author on a site striving for gender equity.) the fact bias persists IN CYBERSPACE KNOWLEDGE even with your commendable effort to restore equity.

What scared me into rant: that people today USE various listing sites in all their colors as resources - lean on them as 'factual' representations - often never looking at the author's OWN WEBSITE to confirm, add, or use the email function to ask for ACTUAL bibliographies/confirm information as accurate. The number of times I see 'information' repeated from sites (not yours/just those in general) cited as 'this is what is real' is what I PERSONALLY find scary - that slanted 'facts' keep on replicating, this trend has nothing to do with you and your site/or with your challenge as making a truly admirable effort to correct the situation.

It's the simple fact (NOW, everywhere) that even with such efforts as yours A WHOLE LOT OF WOMEN AUTHORS' WORK IS STILL INVISIBLE.

You have my undying applause for bucking the trend. Do go on and keep up the good work. I will PM you here with a list of my book titles directly in the interest accepting your invitation to help out. I do not make a practice of 'joining' sites run by enthusiasts which, to contact them, usually is required. Had a headcold not slowed my productivity - I'd not have perused this topic here at all.

Practical suggestion enthusiastically made in your support: A note directed to SFWA by e mail soliciting them to post a notice for women authors in their membership, and asking them to HELP you with updating your site might go a very long way toward reaching out past the bias of information currently available on the internet.

(P. S. - whisper: You might want to look up and include Janet Morris)

#66 by @JannyWurts> First, let me commend you on actually listing your books on a website. So many authors miss this very basic task. In fact, if you have only one single thing on your website, that should be it!

Now, having said that, you said "LT itself fails to list all my published works". I think you already know this, but LT is not an author bibliography site. It's a site that lists actual cataloged works by its members. It's a little like complaining that Amazon doesn't list all your works, even if it doesn't sell them.

What actually astonishes me a little is that not even you have cataloged all your books. That would solve the "problem" right there. But looking at your catalog, you've only added one of your own 20 books (going off the list of English titles on your website) in the almost 7 years you've been here. I would think if anyone would own a copy of all of your books, it'd be you! :)

Now, as to solving the problem of all the random websites out there that take too much time to fix. I wonder if what might solve this is for authors to have a programmer-friendly version of their bibliography. I'm thinking an XML file that lists all their works, with fields for title, author(s), publication date, pub info, etc. Probably wouldn't hurt to have a CSV version as well for those sites that are a bit more low-tech and might only use something as complicted as Excel. Then you can just have a form letter you email sites saying "All of my titles are here in an easily importable version" so you only need to about 5 minutes per site.

And I think it'd be marvelous if someone like iansales would take charge and create such a file for each of the unfairly overlooked women authors. Imagine if you had such a resource that you could just point all these places at? No more would you just have to shout at volunteer projects to "work harder!" You could just do the work once and make it simple to get the word out.

Ranting is an important part of being human, and I do my fair share on a daily basis. But at some point, if you want actual change, it helps to look for solutions. I think the above might actually change things, if done.

>64 icowdave: so you like the WoGF Reading Challenge but our goal to help people find the best books disturbs you?

Yes, the WoGF Reading Challenge is worthy for its pilotage in promoting women authors and in its result of education and variety experienced by those who participate.

When the goal to help people find the best books requires that you omit titles that are considered "bad" only because they have not been given an award, yes it disturbs me. I realize from your explanation that omission of titles is more a result of resources than a policy of identifying "bad" works and that encourages me.

I really want to like your site--it's quite attractive and different. I like it more now that I've spent more time there, but I still prefer to choose my next read based on LibraryThing reviews and suggestions rather than a list, however prestigious, because I've found that LibraryThing accurately and with practically no bias has guided me successfully to very enjoyable SF.

Your WoGFRC brings greater breadth and depth of SF to its readers. Awards lists less so. Compare Brite's Stoker-nominated Exquisite Corpse (on the list) with her Plastic Jesus (not on the list). That's why I applaud WoGFRC -- it's effect is in accord with the goal of the site but reaches beyond(*) -- and I can at least get on board since the result for myself and other readers may be that the sum exceeds its parts.

(*) Perhaps someone will choose Dawn instead of The Parable of the Sower. Both great books. One is on your awards lists. Both come up in your general and advanced search with the "all awards" checked. Is it supposed to do that?

#66 JannyWurts, thanks for the clarification. I got your PM and I'm looking forward to working with you to update our database. I've added Janet Morris to our to do list as well. Our list is long already so it may take some time to get to her. When we opened up the door for requests on the WoGF we got 63 author requests the first day and it has not let up since. We've managed to add 40 new authors and around 300 books to our DB so far. Not bad for the first couple months and we have the rest of the year and beyond to get the rest.

We've tried writing letters in the past looking for help and information from publishers and organizations and we rarely get a favorable response - if we get any response at all. I'm guessing we're not well known enough to get past the "why should we bother?" response that unsolicited communications usually elicit. I'll give the SFWA a shot though.

#67 brightcopy, you're right about the sad condition of the information on most author sites. I love the idea of authors having ready data for sites like ours to use. What I wouldn't give to get my hands on a simple spreadsheet with the author's bib ready to go! That's something that would go nicely with a press kit - something else most authors don't have. If an author actually sent that to me I'd be overjoyed to add it to my site. Research and data collection are massively time consuming and are by far the biggest hurdles in our efforts to grow our site.

#68 psybre, yeah, we don't bother trying to identify the "bad" books. That's up to the individual to decide for themselves. We used the awards and lists as a convenient way to get our site started. People are familiar with them already and it gave us a great visual with the cover art galleries to let our visitors browse for books - something that's rather difficult to do on most web sites like Amazon where you typically go looking for a specific author or title.

We just try to create useful tools that help folks find the best books whether it's the awards and lists or member reviews or forum discussions with other members or links to other blogs or the author profiles or whatever else. If all you read was award winners and books on the best of lists you'd be reading some pretty good books but you'd be missing out on a ton of what's out there. By covering as many awards and lists as we can we hope to give people a wider look at what the genre community considers the best books as a starting point.

On the advanced search on WWEnd, if you pick an award you should only get books or authors within that award. All awards will give you all of the site. I'll have to look at the wording and make some changes to be more clear. That's some hold over from when we ONLY had award nominated books. Thanks for pointing that out.

Where big name reviews are featured....

http://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/womens-representation-at-big-publications-is-a...