The politics of publishing: Selection and rejection of women's words in print

Abstract

The commercial publishing industry is controlled by men and under the guise of rational and objective decision-making, it manages to produce and disseminate material that it claims to be ‘universal’ and representative of all humanity. In fact, through gatekeeping, the publishing industry selects and promotes the ideas and knowledge that effectively maintain and support the dominant male view of the world. This constitutes a rarely acknowledged ‘political’ dimension in the production of knowledge and in the publishing industry. Alternative views, such as those presented by feminists, are contained at a level where they inevitably remain marginal and without the legitimacy that the sheer volume of production and expensive promotion accord to masculist ideals and practices. Feminist publishing cannot compete in terms of scale or influence and feminist writers and feminists in publishing have to contend with the issue of marginality — both ideological and pragmatic — in a male-dominated area. ‘Book publishing, like all industries, is controlled by rich, white heterosexual men’. (West, 1978:6)