Of course it's theoretically possible that these statistics happened by chance. But given the fact that this trend continues--year after year--even as the pool of available reviewable books continue to change, doesn't it seem pretty obtuse to assume that it's happening by random chance? I'm sure some statistician among us can tell us the statistical probability of this happening randomly, say, twenty years in a row, and I'm sure that probability is...unlikely.
The post you're replying to didn't suggest it was down to chance. Here it is again:
No, I'm pretty sure that I was clear on my point that in this instance it is entirely conceivable that the books chosen were chosen on their own merit and that it had nothing at all to do with gender.
I'm not concluding that men or women are better writers, but simply that we should consider that the books chosen were chosen for other reasons than gender, and that, in this instance, the books chosen happened to be primarily written by men?
No mention of it being down to random chance or probability.
Perhaps there's something about men's writing that makes it stand out more than women's writing? That's not putting men above women, or saying that women don't write as well as men.
I recall the judge's comments from a short story competition a few years ago, and one of the observations about the entries was that many of the women had written stories about domestic issues. Many of them were similar in theme and scope. The men's writing was more diverse, more adventurous, and took more risks. I'm paraphrasing from memory and it's been a while, but it was along those lines. It's not a million miles from a point raised in Toothpaste's post:
I'll try to explain a bit why this is a far more complicated subject than just a numbers game. Let's say, for argument's sake, all women wrote the same kind of books and all men wrote the same kind of books. This is absurd and untrue, but it seems to be a premise people like to work from so why not play with it. The debate then becomes "why are male topics considered more literary and universal and female topics considered small and for girls only?" That is the heart of the issue. Why is it that a book about war considered more literary than one about raising a family? Why is it that a book about male ennui is considered more literary than one about a woman's midlife crisis?
Perhaps men choose more interesting things to write about, or more diverse topics. Well-written stories of a woman's mid-life crisis are worthy reading material, I'm sure. How many are going to stand out?
If it bothers a woman that much then they know what they need to do - write a better book.
I read plenty of fiction written by women and don't consider it inferior to the fiction I read that's written by men in any way at all. I don't generally read stuff about a woman's mid-life crisis or stories with a domestic theme (though I have read some).
Maybe men (not all men, but as a proportion, more so than women) write about subjects that are more varied or stand out more.
Maybe not. But it doesn't have to be about random chance.
Or maybe there is a gender bias. I don't know. But whenever the topic comes up, I think it's worth looking at the data supporting the argument. I recall a blog post about the balance between male and female winners of the Booker prize and the gender make-up of the Booker panel, based on an article in the Guardian newspaper. It seemed to suggest that the panel was dominated by male judges and that accounted for a bias towards male winners. I did my own analysis of the Booker results and found that despite having male-dominated panels judging, the number of female winners at 36.6% almost exactly matched the number of shortlisted female authors at 37.1%. Hardly evidence of a gender bias amongst the male-dominated judging panels.
(Blog thread here:
http://fictionbitch.blogspot.com/2010/04/its-mans-world.html)
I just didn't want to go down that road, since I know there's a thoroughly unproductive flame-war at the end of it. That said, I didn't feel comfortable letting that comment slide w/o a mention, either.
