A Literary Glass Ceiling? Why Magazines Aren't Reviewing More Female Writers. | The New Republics

Amy King, “We know women write...We know women read...." So why are book reviewers primarily men who review books written by other men? A Literary Glass Ceiling? Why Magazines Aren't Reviewing More Female Writers. | The New Republic.

...In 2010...publications printed vastly more book reviews by men than by women. They also reviewed more books by male authors. The numbers are startling. At Harper’s, there were 27 male book reviewers and six female; about 69 percent of the books reviewed were by male authors. At the London Review of Books, men wrote 78 percent of the reviews and 74 percent of the books reviewed. Men made up 84 percent of the reviewers for The New York Review of Books and authored 83 percent of the books reviewed. TNR, I’m sorry to say, did not compare well: Of the 62 writers who wrote about books for us last year, only 13 (or 21 percent) were women. We reviewed a total of 64 books, nine of them by women (14.5 percent). “We know women write,” poet Amy King writes on the VIDA website. “We know women read. It’s time to begin asking why the 2010 numbers don’t reflect those facts with any equity.” But let’s slow down for a moment....