Sexism in the literary world

I'm glad to feel I'm part of the solution because I'm a submitting maniac, and I'll resub to any publication at exactly the same rate whether it encourages me or not, which is precisely as often as I have an excuse to.

Not resubmitting to a pub that ASKS you to? That boggles my already-addled brain.

I remember a publication gave me a pretty nice rejection -- however I haven't submitted anything since because it was a flash-fiction publication and I haven't written any flash-fiction since.

You see, I don't see this. I'm currently reading a female author, the four books I have on the 'to read list' are women. Looking at the long list of to-read there are more women than men. My favourite authors are all women: Hilary Mantel, Angela Carter and Rosemary Sutcliff. It's been three years since a man won The Booker Prize.

If its true that women are less likely to submit, then cool I'm a literary-feminist.

LiteraryNovelist said:

(P.S. Is there an easy way to do quote within quote within quote on this forum, so that I don't have to cut and paste the way I did above?)

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Use the multiquote button on the first post you want to quote from, and any others, but use the on the very last one you wish to quote; that button actually creates the posting form and inserts all the quoted posts.

You'll likely still need to remove the quoted post section that you are not specifically replying to.

I found this thread really interesting, as an editor. I've worked for small/medium independent publishers for many years, but started my career in a big house.

I can only speak for myself, but I've experienced gender bias and plain old sexism from the marketing side of publishing far more than the editorial side--a greater willingness to increase promotional budget for male authors, an irrational focus on the marketability of female authors based on sex appeal etc.

I have never worked with a male editor who shortchanged women, or vice versa, that I'm aware of. Perhaps I'm lucky or just unobservant. But I agree that bias can be unconscious.

My present publisher is heavily into technology, and submissions are swept electronically for (among other things) repetition, plagiarism, reading level, and keyword strings. They get numbered so that they are read in order of receipt. Author names are removed from files sent out for reading.

Some readers are really peeved by this and want to know the writer's gender, like strangers not sure how to react to a baby unless it's in pink or blue. That seems to bear out the idea of unconscious bias.

It's also my experience that women re-submit with less frequency than men. I've often provided encouragement and constructive comments to a woman, and...silence. I can count on one hand the number of men who didn't try again.

Coming to this thread way late, but The Missouri Review blogged about this not long after the VIDA stats came. TMR is very gender-balanced in terms of what it publishes.

On Gender Bias in Publishing, Editing, and Writing

I found this excerpt from the blog interesting:

A concern raised by more than one student (male and female) was pretty straightforward: who cares about the author if the work is good? Shouldn’t the criteria simply be “this is good work”? Aren’t we just creating quotas?

No, I don’t think we are. We receive over ten thousand submissions per year. Of those, we publish forty. Is there really a difference between no. 40 and no. 41? Probably not. Do we receive, say, one hundred submissions that deserve to be published? Absolutely. Our aim is to publish the best writing that we can … but “best” is a nebulous criteria and is not the only thing that we do.

We also teach. We’re at a major state university, and we offer a class in publishing, training future writers and editors. That’s a factor.

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ETA: Anybody who looks at the name of the submitter and doesn't use a system like Jenn K described, is susceptible to being affected by an unconscious bias. There have been lots of studies done with resumes where the researchers changed nothing on the resume but the name, and certain names got better interview rates. e.g. Jacob Anderson might get more interview requests than Molly Anderson or DeShawn Jones. Of course the people reviewing the resumes thought they weren't affected by biases at all.

I feel like I see more female names on the shelf than male. I definitely have come across more female agents. I even feel like I know more avid readers that are female.

I really expected This thread to be the other way around.

Jenn_K said:

It's also my experience that women re-submit with less frequency than men. I've often provided encouragement and constructive comments to a woman, and...silence. I can count on one hand the number of men who didn't try again.

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This is interesting. I do resubmit to publications and agents who encourage me, but I have to fight my nature to do so. Basically, once someone encourages me, I'm terrified of disappointing them with my next submission and being cast into the outer darkness again. My greatest fear is getting a form rejection next time that doesn't say "please submit again." That deals a much worse blow to my confidence than an initial form rejection. So part of me is always trying to convince myself that "They were just being polite" and there's no point in resubmitting.

I don't know if that's a gender thing or just the product of my upbringing and such.

Fuchsia Groan said:

This is interesting. I do resubmit to publications and agents who encourage me, but I have to fight my nature to do so. Basically, once someone encourages me, I'm terrified of disappointing them with my next submission and being cast into the outer darkness again. My greatest fear is getting a form rejection next time that doesn't say "please submit again." That deals a much worse blow to my confidence than an initial form rejection. So part of me is always trying to convince myself that "They were just being polite" and there's no point in resubmitting.

I don't know if that's a gender thing or just the product of my upbringing and such.

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A suggestion: perhaps remind yourself that you are giving the agent or editor an opportunity. They want that opportunity or they would not have invited you to submit again.

I would never encourage an author out of politeness; I don't know any agents or editors who would do so. It would be unkind, not to mention time-consuming.

Jenn_K said:

A suggestion: perhaps remind yourself that you are giving the agent or editor an opportunity. They want that opportunity or they would not have invited you to submit again.

I would never encourage an author out of politeness; I don't know any agents or editors who would do so. It would be unkind, not to mention time-consuming.

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Excellent point!

On this query go-round, I queried several agents who had requested fulls of a previous ms. but not offered. Several form-rejected the new book, which discouraged me enough that I stopped mentioning such prior interactions in my letters. I felt like a pest who was banging on the gatekeepers' gates.

Then one of those agents offered -- and she remembered our previous interaction without being prompted. That was pretty awesome.

So yeah. I don't know if girls are still more likely to hear the parental injunctions "Don't bother people, don't be a pest, don't presume on people's good will," but I do know those lessons won't serve you in the submission process.

Of course, there's a difference between "bothering people" in a polite, professional way and being a genuine pest.

I am also guilty of not re-submitting. I received a really nice rejection note from a very reputable literary journal a couple years ago saying that several of their staff read and enjoyed the story but ultimately it wasn't the right fit. They asked me to submit again, and I haven't! But I haven't written a short story since then... it just doesn't seem to be my preferred format. I keep trying to force myself to finish another one to submit, but I can't seem to break out of novel mode.

My stories have been published in two well-known mystery magazines.

The editor once told me that she got almost twice as many submissions from men as from women. (This was twenty years ago, but I wonder if things have changed that much.)

And btw, I am female for those who don't know. 'Jaksen' was a character from a scifi story I wrote as a teenager, and long before the singing family became famous.

One thing I've wondered about lately is if it's not so much the submitter, but the character's gender feeding this issue. From my personal experience, stories I've sent out with a male lead character get a positive response, the ones with female leads get almost nothing. It's like someone pulling a tampon out of their purse and the whole world going silent. We need more stories about women. And they don't all have to be kick ass women, either. We just need stories, period. Sally Field said last week that female actresses were all but being pushed out of the film industry. Sandra Bullock headed Gravity, but how many movies with female leads came out last year? Miss Field previously starred in Norma Rae and Places in the Heart. Meryl Streep starred in Silkwood. Where are these movies? Why aren't they being written, published, turned into films anymore? Is it cliche to write about women? I hope not. Maybe the world thinks we've solved all our problems and there's nothing left to say. Or perhaps this is an era of anti-reality. Escapism is the trend. Who knows . . .

folkchick said:

Is it cliche to write about women? I hope not. Maybe the world thinks we've solved all our problems and there's nothing left to say. Or perhaps this is an era of anti-reality. Escapism is the trend. Who knows . . .

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Those Stepford-homage titles say it all: The [Interesting Male Occupation]'s [Female Relative]. A few months ago, I told my colleagues that I would shoot myself if I saw another riff on this silliness. Suddenly the daily log was full of entries like "The Milliner's Husband's Maltese" and "The Brazilian Wax Aesthetician's Hirsute Son."

Sad confession: for several days I thought they were real submissions.

I'm not making light of your comments, at all. The response to your male and female MCs is hard to fathom, if they are equally compelling.

Authors have an amazing opportunity to challenge bias by opening hearts and minds. An unforgettable story or character can literally change someone's life. There's a reason the Taliban don't want girls to read.

I hope authors who want to write those stories don't feel they can only sell them with a male MC.

I feel like it's still the opposite in YA. I had a novel with a primary female POV and a secondary male POV, and I was told it wouldn't sell because male MCs don't work in YA. I also got far more positive responses to my query after I changed it to a female POV. That may be changing what with John Green's success.

I hate that titling pattern in lit fic, though. Hate it. Regardless of whether it's sexist, it just sounds so trendy and stilted.

As a sidebar to this discussion, it's intriguing to me that there appear to be so many more female literary agents than male literary agents.

caw

Interesting discussion. I wonder if anyone has read the recent article in The Atlantic about male/female differences in confidence? It seems to dove-tail nicely with this conversation.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/04/the-confidence-gap/359815/

At any rate, it spurred me into renewed query action after a long hiatus. Because deep down, I know my book kicks butt--but I also have to aggressively send it out, too, and believe that someone else will agree with me.

Fuchsia Groan said:

I feel like it's still the opposite in YA. I had a novel with a primary female POV and a secondary male POV, and I was told it wouldn't sell because male MCs don't work in YA. I also got far more positive responses to my query after I changed it to a female POV. That may be changing what with John Green's success.

I hate that titling pattern in lit fic, though. Hate it. Regardless of whether it's sexist, it just sounds so trendy and stilted.

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I think it is, and I think it's one reason so many of the adult women I know read YA.

I think what people don't realize is sexism is still a very real thing in many places, especially in the literal world- and people don't even catch onto it. It isn't that women don't want to be in authoritative roles and become politicians and work in the business world and have plenty of works published or that they can't- it's just much harder for women to do so. There are boundaries, and fences to jump over that a male wouldn't have to. People tend to listen to men more, generally speaking. And it isn't something that's blatantly obvious, but something that becomes much more obvious once we pay attention to the little things.