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Rebologged from Kristen Twardowski’s Writer’s Workshop

Sadly, the publishing industry is still run by male executives. I’ve spoken to a number of female agents and even editors, but their selections are still based on what they perceive the industry to want, and the industry still prefers male-driven narratives and the metaphors that accompany them.

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Image from Caroline Nichols’ blog post

I find this ironic since industry figures show the number of female readers outweighs the number of men. However,  the recent experience of a certain female Presidential candidate, not to mention interviews with women voters who thought a woman should never be President, leads me to suspect even female readers can be conditioned by the choices of the masculine editing and marketing empire.

I worked as fundraising organizer for a well-known grassroots social justice group in the eighties and would have laughed at this analysis as “feminist sour grapes” until I worked for the office in Austin where two women served as the head organizers. The men who worked under them openly went out of their way to humiliate the women and undermine their authority. Only when I witnessed this did I realize how difficult it is for women in any profession to gain the respect of the old-boy network, including a progressive old-boy network that claims they’re sensitive to “women’s issues.”Meg Cabot shares Catherine Nichols’ experiment with author agents’ gender perceptions with Kristen Twardowski’s Writers Workshop.

Meg Cabot shares Catherine Nichols’ experiment with author agents’ gender perceptions with Kristen Twardowski.

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