Best books? Says who?

[Sandra Parshall]

The Publishers Weekly list of the "100 best books of 2009" includes shockingly few works by women. So what else is new? The Sisters in Crime response has been posted by SinC President Marcia Talley at http://sisters-in-crime-sinc.blogspot.com/.

Take a look and offer your own views on the topic.

[Jon Loomis]

I'd say the odds of one of these lists turning out be all women are roughly zero, but then I'm kind of old school.

[John McFetridge]

We have had some literary prize lists in Canada be all women. Of course, last night our Giller prize (big deal here) had four women nominees and a guy and he won it (Alice Munro took herself out of the running and everyone was shocked Margaret Atwood wasn't nominated), so go figure.

[Jon Loomis]

Yeah, but you're talking about Canada, for God's sake. Those people are commies up there.

[John McFetridge]

Well, okay, you got me there.

[Jon Loomis]

Am not.

[I. J. Parker]

:)

[Jon Loomis]

John D likes to take the contrarian view. I like to take a view that's contrary to the contrarian view. I do have an argumentative streak (I blame my upbringing), which I try to confine to online discussion boards and such, and which is one of my most annoying character flaws. Oh well.

[Dan Coleman]

I suspect most involved in the selection process were/are female, not that it makes a difference. And they chose the works based on their own opinions/evaluations. I don't think they have an obligation to be politically correct, nor to worry about the careers or opportunities of other writers based on gender. I'm not suggesting there might not be a problem with the gatekeepers, with a truly fair way of considering works for publication, but that's life and I'm certain it's not one regarding gender.(Consider the number of smaller companies whose writers are all or almost all female and tell me gender bias isn't evident there). It is a dog-eat-dog business in an unfair, uneven world. Publishing is a private industry. The owners publish what they want. Those who don't like it can start their own companies, as many are now doing, thanks to POD, or they can boycott. The alternative is to look for big brother to enact laws to give female writers a more level playing field. Is that what you'd like? Maybe we can send someone around to beat the living hell out of them, make sure they make the right choices next time.

I'd like to know why so many nurses are female, though the percentage is changing. I'd like to know how many wives are secretaries(excuse me, administrative assistants), while thousands of husbands/fathers are out of work. I'd like to know why a male applicant to certain medical technology programs is laughed at, like some kind of clown, and not admitted. There are many areas wherein gender favors one over the other, all of them more important than who gets published or voted as the author of the "best" story by one of a million similar entities.

Of course, the question is a legitimate one because someone feels something is wrong here. I just don't think it's one of neglecting women, consciously or not.

I ask you: what is the answer?

[Jon Loomis]

They're not obliged to do anything they don't want to do, obviously, especially if they don't care about the appearance of bias--and they evidently don't.

[Sandra Parshall]

Dan wonders why so many nurses and secretaries are female. I think the reason is simple: the pay is terrible. But up to the 20th century, secretaries were mostly male. Few women worked in offices before that; it wasn't considered proper. And up to the last century or so, nursing wasn't a medical profession, it was a dead-end job that involved a lot of cleaning and little else. Remember that Florence Nightingale was laughed at when she proposed that nurses could be valuable partners with doctors in the care of the sick. (Even now, a lot of nurses will tell you that they're held in low esteem by doctors.) For whatever reason, secretarial work and nursing have come to be seen as women's jobs, in the most negative sense of the term.

[Sandra Parshall]

Amazon's editors have a best 100 list too.

http://tinyurl.com/ydbg4u9

[I. J. Parker]

This appears to be based on sales.