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You’ve no doubt seen the headlines and handwringing proclaiming that men are being pushed out of the literary landscape: Men don’t read anymore. Men can’t get book deals. Men can’t even sit in a bar with a book without being accused of being a performative male.
- Okay, that last one is real. (And it’s dumb. Let the fellas read.)
Data scientist and English professor Dan Sinykin, author of one of the best recent books about the publishing industry, dug into the numbers to look for the facts behind these feelings. The verdict?
After decades of underrepresentation, women have, in recent years, approached or just achieved parity, which is the backdrop against which we hear about fears that literary men are disappearing.
Across bestseller lists, book prizes, short stories, and the overall fiction landscape, yes, men are losing ground, but only because they have dominated the scene for, well, as long as the scene has existed.
- If this panic—women catch up and men freak out—sounds familiar, that’s because it is.
- Sinykin’s findings echo Dale Spender’s famous study, documented in the book Man Made Language, that found that women are perceived as dominating a conversation when they took up as little as 30% of the airtime.
One exception: women may be dominating literary fellowships at a rate of 2:1, according to data from the National Endowment for the Arts.
📊 Learn more about the data and Sinykin’s methodology. — RJS