VIDA: Women in Literary Arts have now published The Count 2012, tallying how many (or rather, how few) reviews/bylines/authors reviewed in a variety of prominent publications were female.
As in previous years, a decidedly male slant is far too prevalent (and as in previous year, The New Republic really stands out: only 10.23 per cent of book reviews were by females, and only 16.67 per cent of books reviewed were by female authors.)
As frequently noted, I've considered How Sexist are We ? at the complete review, and I'm afraid the numbers continue to be bad (and it comes as a slight relief that at least the review added yesterday was of a book written by a woman). As also previously noted, the focus on books in translation helps skew results here -- considerably more male-authored books are translated than female-authored ones (though the gap narrows with more recent publications).
Of course, the demographics hereabouts are far from any norm anyway: less than ten per cent of the last sixty titles reviewed were originally written in English, for example.
As frequently noted, I've considered How Sexist are We ? at the complete review, and I'm afraid the numbers continue to be bad (and it comes as a slight relief that at least the review added yesterday was of a book written by a woman). As also previously noted, the focus on books in translation helps skew results here -- considerably more male-authored books are translated than female-authored ones (though the gap narrows with more recent publications).
Of course, the demographics hereabouts are far from any norm anyway: less than ten per cent of the last sixty titles reviewed were originally written in English, for example.