5 November 2003

It's the Wimp Factor—Or Is It?
by Diane Silver

Diane is the editor of The Broadsheet.

Are women wimps? Or, to put my point more politely: Do women writers give up too easily? That seemed to be the message I heard last May when I attended the panel "Gender Bias Among Editors of SF Magazines" at WisCon 27.

Prompted by an article by Susan Urbanek Linville in the Winter 2002 SFWA Bulletin, the panel searched for the reason that women—nearly 51 percent of the population—made up no more than 26 percent of the bylines in the Big Four print magazines (Asimov's, F&SF, Analog, Realms of Fantasy). Similar percentages were discovered when Linville examined short-story publications in the same magazines for the period of 1980-2001.

Linville's "SF & Fantasy in the New Millennium: Women Publishing Short Fiction" noted that the cause may be that women get discouraged easier and submit fewer stories than men. Gordon Van Gelder at F&SF, for example, reported that of 375 submissions, 25 percent (94) were from women, while 70.5 percent (265) were from men and 4.5 percent (17) from authors whose gender was unknown.

Like the article, many of the WisCon panelists (three women and three men) argued that women simply gave up more easily than men. Either women failed to submit in the first place or threw a story in the drawer after it collected its first rejection. Other panelists argued that women had more family demands and, thus, produced less than men. All seemed to agree that conscious gender bias was not a major problem among editors.

If this is true, then what we have here is a classic good news—bad news situation.

The good news is that if enemy is us, we can do something about it. While struggling to overcome a psychological barrier isn't easy, tussling with the problem and forcing ourselves to the post office is, at least, totally under our control. And if Wimpism with a capital "W" really is the main issue, then Broad Universe and the support we're already providing women authors (with more support to come) may well make a major impact on the field.

The bad news, of course, is that if the enemy is a society that forces too much family responsibility on women, then it's going to take more then a renewed infusion of gumption to solve this. We'll need the cooperation of possibly reluctant spouses, not to mention needy kids and other relatives who may think writing is a waste of time.

This good news/bad news theory is compelling, but I wonder if this is all that's going on. Perhaps we're caught in a self-fulfilling prophecy where (take a deep breath, reader) magazines get fewer submissions from women ... and therefore print fewer stories by women ... leading women to think we’re not welcome ... which leads us to give up. Meanwhile, we’re nominated less often for awards because we have fewer stories published ... which means we win fewer times ... which once again leads us to feel unwelcome and that we shouldn't even try.

Or perhaps something subtler is happening where the topics or characters that interest the majority of women writers aren’t the topics editors think will sell. Or perhaps, well, I don’t know. There might be another unknown factor that is the one true thing that limits women's bylines, or the root cause might be a combination of all of the above. I do know, though, that I worry when I hear someone say that the real problem behind an obvious inequality is that they (be they black, Hispanic, Native American, gay, female) just aren’t good/tough/qualified/whatever enough.

Maybe many women writers really aren't tough enough, at least not yet. However, focusing solely on the women-are-doing-it-to-themselves theory conveniently absolves editors from any responsibility. Heck, if women writers are themselves the problem, then editors don’t even have to think about the issue.

I know Broad Universe will do its part by offering support, advice and anything else we can imagine that will help women succeed. If I have to, I'll personally crack a whip over the heads of BU members to submit, submit, submit. But I think editors also have a role in opening the field to more women.

In my day job, I edit magazines for a research university, so I know how tough an editor's job is. I also know that sf/f is blessed with a multitude of open-minded editors of integrity who care passionately about publishing fine writers, no matter what gender they are. That's why I feel confident editors will meet the challenge and do a little navel gazing of their own. Do you, as an editor, encourage men more than women? Do you write, for example, more personal notes on rejection letters to men simply because it's so easy to assume that men are more likely to develop into good writers than women? And most important of all: Is there something more you can do to let women know that our work is welcome in your publication?

This isn't just an altruistic exercise. We all know the genre is struggling. Publishers Weekly reports that the science fiction and fantasy share of the book market has sunk to just a little more than 7 percent at the same time sf/f magazines continue to fight for circulation. Bringing new writers with a different perspective into the field can only help.

Besides, Linville had another interesting statistic in her article. By taking a random sample of the 2001 WorldCon membership roster, Linville discovered that perhaps nearly 50 percent of the members were female. That represents a lot of committed fans, magazine buyers and book readers, who along with many men—and I'm willing to bet even a few teenage boys—would be thrilled to be able to read more work by women.

*Many thanks to the BU Advisory Board for their help with a special thanks to Amy Hanson for her detailed editing.