Writing by women or for women? Either way, You're less likely to be reviewed

Abstract

Scholars have consistently found that female artists receive less attention from critics than their male counterparts. In this study, we conduct a closer examination of the mechanisms driving this persistent form of inequality. Drawing on a uniquely comprehensive dataset of all English-language fiction books published in a calendar year, we find that women authors face two significant—and distinctive—gender penalties. First, we find that books classified as belonging to feminized literary subgenres are least likely to be reviewed by mainstream critical outlets. This gendered genre-based exclusion is the first way in which women authors are penalized, since the majority of writers writing in these categories are women. Second, we find that even when women writers publish books in androcentric subgenres or gender-neutral categories of literary fiction, their books are still less likely to be selected for review compared to those written by their male counterparts. This is a form of gendered artist-based exclusion. These empirical findings exhort scholars of the arts to move beyond documenting gender inequalities in review coverage to uncovering the multiple ways that gender impresses itself on the review process as an attribute of both artists and genres.