To all my ladies – happy International Women’s Day! And what a post I have for you on this day. Today, I welcome David and Morgan, the founders of WriterWriter, to talk about prejudice and inequality in fiction, primarily in the scifi and fantasy genres and how it affects the industry and the end result – the fiction that eventually reaches the reader. What can be done about it? And why does it happen? Let’s see what David and Morgan have to say. (I must add, I received no compensation for this post. I believe in the cause and want to support it.) Welcome David and Morgan from WriterWriter.

The Writer Behind The Name

We all know, readers and writers alike, that pen names (also called pseudonyms) are a great tool for writers who wish for the veil of anonymity it grants or wish to write in more than one genre.

But, as it happens, it’s also a tool used by a certain group of writers who need it to be taken seriously as a writer. I have no doubt that right now you’re imagining this only applies to those who have a silly or boring name, but I’m going to leave those aside at the moment. Because the one thing that probably hasn’t crossed your mind is the fact of female writers having to resort to such a method in order to be treated fairly and equally to men.

It’s an embarrassment to even entertain the idea that in today’s society women are still judged as inferior in any form.

And yet here we are.

A scene from Star Trek, where one of the men facepalms

To give a grand example, look at J.K. Rowling. We all know her and we all know her books (even if you haven’t read them, you’ve likely heard of them), but I’m not going to focus on that. Rather, I’m going to focus on her name. Her real name. Which is Joanne. However when the time came that Rowling’s books were accepted for publication, Bloomsbury – the publishers of the Harry Potter books – asked her to use her initials so that the book would be better received by the target audience due to the fact that it would be harder for readers to make notions about her gender. After this came Rowling’s cross over to the crime thriller market under the male pen name, Robert Galbraith.

Instead of using their real names or a female pen name, many female authors use initials, unisex or male pen names in order to appeal to a broader target audience. The expectation of not being accepted is what leads to this decision. The expectation is based on the still evident bias towards male authors by certain readers, publishers and reviewers. Bestsellers lists also reflect a small percentage of female authors compared to male authors.

Instead of using their real names or a female pen name, many female authors use initials, unisex or male pen names. Why does this happen and how does it affect the publishing industry? Click To Tweet

This occurs much more often in notoriously male-dominated genres such as science fiction and fantasy where female writers have an even harder time being accepted and taken seriously.

There is an overall consistent feeling that women can write these genres as well as men, as bloody as men, as tough as men… whatever negative, stereotypical adjective one can put here. Gender stereotypes still permeate society through industry, government and culture. The one genre, of course, where women don’t have to resort to this, is – very predictably – romance, which conforms to this stereotypical ideal.

A GIF of a scene from a black and white movie, where a woman says to a man, ‘There’s nothing like a lovesong… to give you a good laugh.’

And the bigger issue is that with most people, this bias is subconscious – and not just in men, but in women themselves too. It’s ingrained in them, but they don’t realize it. Chances are if you see two fantasy novels, one bearing a male name and another a feminine name, that you’ll instinctively be driven to pick the male’s novel first.

How Do We Know This?

We’ve done this test in a playful sort of manner with 10 bookworms (5 of them male, 5 of them women). Only one female bookworm picked the female writer. The other 9 picked the male. We did the same test with a female name and a unisex name. This time all picked the unisex name first.

Morgan Wright, the female co-founder of WriterWriter, herself took a unisex pen name because of this fear. She thought that this would help her avoid prejudice, and in a large part it has. Most people, they see her name and address her as “Mr.”. As Morgan says, “I can’t say the amount of times I’ve come across this on Twitter where my profile picture is completely ignored in lieu of my unisex pen name which causes people to address me as a man.”

As a writer you might pin your dreams on having your book reviewed in top book review websites/papers, yet even these feature male writers more often than female writers with an average of 7 out of 10 reviews being for male authors. And this is just the average. Some prestige review establishments have an even lower number of female authors.

Most top review websites/papers feature male writers more often than female writers with an average of 7 out of 10 reviews being for male authors. Maybe it's time for change? Click To Tweet

Some Numbers?

If we look at one of the bigger publishers [name redacted] of sci-fi and fantasy, we see that they have published a table of submissions, detailing male and female submissions that show a shocking two thirds of all submissions were by male authors. Only 33% of Fantasy submissions and 22% of sci-fi submissions, were by female authors. Urban fantasy/paranormal romance on the other hand saw female authors outnumber their male counterparts with 57% and YA having 68% female submissions.

A GIF of a woman, with a severely disappointed smile

Maybe it’s the many decades of ill treatment of female authors that has led to them mistrust publishers, as well as a fear that they will not be taken as seriously as their male counterparts. These statistics of low female submission prove that, but is this because women writers have now started believing in the stereotypes given to them through the lack of female writers in the industry and genre? Or is it that they have given up trying to solve the issue of gender inequality through large operations and instead are turning to self-publishing as their only alternative?

Female writers have long had to endure being pigeon holed as romance or paranormal romance writers and this has lead to the creation of a glass ceiling that we now see in few female authors submitting works of sci-fi and fantasy.

When an industry has stereotypes for so long, it becomes the norm and when it becomes the norm, we conform.

But conformity stifles creativity and genius.

Even agents seem to be against women. Some studies suggest that women are up to 3 times less likely to garner interest from an agent. And men are more likely to receive positive feedback even with a rejection from an agent. And to take it even further, women who aren’t writers but work in publishing houses find themselves paid lower than their male counterparts despite women outnumbering men in this industry by two to one.

So The Question Is – What Can We Do To Stop It?

It will take persistence, that’s for sure. If history I anything to go by, it will not happen at the click of the button. We do have the power of social media, however, to spread the word and bring about change. And change must start inevitably with the reader. The reader has the power to change the direction of the publishing industry. If more people are not only buying books by women writers, but also talking about the injustice of the issue, there’s a bigger chance of the publishers and agents listening.

The more we talk about the gender inequality in SFF, the bigger the chance the publishers and agents will start listening. So start talking. Click To Tweet

Gender inequality still plagues not just the publishing industry but all industries and segments of society. This has been proven every year with statistical data on the gender pay gap. In the UK and the USA, a woman still gets paid 18% less than men. This is an average across all sectors and industries, with some industries and jobs having a much larger difference.

Despite all this, we should still count ourselves lucky to be living in our western world where women have the rights that they do. Even if the rights are not truly equal yet. The rest of the world, especially emerging economies are full of girls and women who are refused the right to education, something we now take for granted. We do not wish to only continue the fight for equal rights in our own culture but also to spread this message of equality to all nations and offer hope for a brighter future for all people in all countries.

Because the truth is, it shouldn’t be that it will still take us 62 years to close the gender pay gap.

The only way we can start any sort of change is by speaking out about it. The world is listening. What are you going to say?

Sources: Sexism in Genre Publishing: A Publisher’s Perspective, Women lose $513 billion a year in wages due to gender pay gap and math is worse for some, Gender justice and women’s rights, The 2017 VIDA Count, Bias , she wrote: The Gender Balance of The New York Times Best Seller list, Writing under a male name makes you eight times more likely to get published, one female author finds, Gender pay gap in the UK: 2018.