Who Publishes More Books in U.S. English Departments, Men or Women?

Abstract

The “gender gap” in the U.S. publication of English language and literature scholarly books has not been fully investigated. In order to investigate gender disparity, we collected, aggregated, and analyzed data on 1633 faculty members who authored or edited 4835 scholarly books at the top 50 U.S. English Ph.D. departments. Despite the fact that more women than men have received Ph.D.s in English since 1987, the top 50 departments are predominantly male, and male faculty members publish more books on a per capita basis. However, who publishes more books in these departments varies: (1) with the department that the faculty member is in (with grater parity in the middle 30 departments); and (2) when the faculty member published their first book, with female faculty who published their first book after 1998 publishing as many books on a per person basis as male faculty. This paper also offers recommendations on how marketing strategies can be used to ameliorate the “gender gap” in this academic field.