Magazines: where are the women writers?

Heather Mallick has written a great piece on women writers in American magazines. About a year ago, I noticed this trend when reading The Atlantic. Where are the women writers?

Mallick's article unveils a surprising disinterest amongst editors of the big "liberal" magazines in the US to make the effort to include a more diverse group of writers.

I can't say I'm surprised.

Last year, an American website, WomenTK, began tracking the ratio of male to female writers in Harper's, The Atlantic, The NYT Magazine, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Arguably, the ratio should be more or less one to one because that's what life is like. As it turned out:

* Vanity Fair 2.7:1.

* The New Yorker 4.1:1.

* The Atlantic 3.6:1.

* Harper's 6.9:1 (118 male bylines, only 17 female). Fully six of its 12 issues from September '05 to August '06 had one or no female writers.

The numbers, as Ruth Davis Konigsberg of WomenTK writes, prove Ursula K. Le Guin's remark that “when women speak more than 30 per cent of the time, men perceive them as dominating the conversation.”

The excerpt above is taken from rabble.ca's republishing of Mallick's article which originally ran on CBC.ca.

For a thorough analysis of The Atlantic, Harpers, New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker and Vanity Fair and women writers go to: WomenTK.

Labels: Heather Mallick, magazines, women writers

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posted by Jenn @ 4:08 PM