Who's missing?

[coalescent]

[Poll #1046886]

Actual answer here. Vote before you click.

EDIT: See also jlassen's two entries, and Andrew Wheeler here.

FURTHER EDIT: Commentary from rosefox here and cristalia here.

Comments

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

You mean what I personally review or what gets reviewed at SH? (I have tracked both ...)

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

At SH. (I assume the authorship of reviews by you is 100% male, but if there is something you'd like to tell us ...)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Right. Yes, the gender of the author of reviews written by me is pretty consistent, but the gender of the authors of the subject of reviews written by me tends to vary. (Basically, anytime anyone actually sends me something for review -- Vector or NYRSF -- it tends to be by a guy, so any time I actually choose something for myself -- SH -- I've been trying to choose women. Except I haven't done so well at that over the last six months or so.)

Anyway, Strange Horizons. Deep breath.

As of tomorrow, in 2007 SH will have published 148 reviews (of 144 different things, due to "two views" pieces and other overlap) by 53 reviewers. Of the reviewers, 29 (55%) are men and 24 (45%) are women. That's where the good news ends. The 29 men accounts for 92 (62%) of the reviews, while the 24 women account for 54 (38%) of the reviews. Worse, of the 130 reviews of books (88% of all reviews), 93 (72%) are books by men and 37 (28%) are books by women.

I can tell you that this last figure roughly reflects the proportions of books we receive. At the moment, in on my list of books-we-have-that-I-would-in-principle-like-to-get-reviewed-sometime, there are 26 books; 6 (23%) are by women and 20 (77%) are by men. I haven't tried to count to see how this reflects sf publishing in general, though I'd love to know. I also haven't counted to see how SH compares to other reviews venues.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

You might want to break this out into a post of its own.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

seconded.

Maybe you could get someone who prefers reading women/authors of color/what-have-you to occasionally shoot you a list of the stuff they'd like to see reviewed? And use that to supplement your own list?

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

I'll third that I think this is interesting enough to be broken out into a post of its own.

And in a getting something done about making a better balance, I have many (many!) YA books I could offer you that could be sent off as review copies to people, most of which are by women. (Unfortunately, I probably need to keep the best ones unless someone local reviewed them so I could get them back after.

Third, I vote Liz reviews the Clare book.

(And finally, LJ annoyingly did not send me a copy of this comment. boo.)

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I am sufficiently free of strong opinions about the author to do that.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

That attitude won't start you any slapfights, missy ...