Flashback Friday.
In a post at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Steve Rendall and Zachary Tomanelli investigated the racial breakdown of the book reviewers and authors in two important book review venues, the New York Times Book Review and C-SPAN’s After Words. They found that the vast majority of both reviewers and authors were white males.
Overall, 95% of the authors and 96% of the reviewers were non-Latino white (compare that with the fact that whites are just over 60% of the U.S. population as of 2016).
Women accounted for between 13 and 31% of the authors and reviewers:
This is some hard data showing that white men’s ideas are made more accessible than the ideas of others, likely translating into greater influence on social discourse and public policy. These individuals certainly don’t all say the same thing, nor do they necessarily articulate ideas that benefit white men, but a greater diversity of perspectives would certainly enrich our discourse.
Via Scatterplot.
Originally posted in September, 2010.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 18
Race, Gender, and Book Reviews » Sociological Images | eBook Reviews — September 12, 2010
[...] Original post by lisa [...]
Paul — September 12, 2010
I think a further breakdown of the data by subject matter would better illustrate the disparities, at least in fields where the disparities in race/gender representation would be meaningful.
Anna — September 12, 2010
Um, I find it interesting that the 31% of female reviewers show up on TV... where they can be looked at. Weird? I think so. I guess their opinions are less important when their faces aren't attached.
Eve — September 12, 2010
What I find to be extremely important but not present here, in terms of being able to interpret this data, is the racial/gender breakdown of authors in general. While the breakdown of reviewers can be looked at on its own, the breakdown of the authors reviewed is less clear cut. In order to know the significance of that data, it's necessary to know the breakdown of authors in general. Because, for example, while the books these media review might not match certain groups' percentage of the total population, they might be closer to matching that groups' percentage of *authors*. I'm not saying that's the case, but we don't know until we have the data. Because, for instance, the kind of situation in my example would put more of the responsibility on publishers and slightly less on reviewers.
Book Reviews Open Up A Discussion on the Race, Gender Divide | Ernesto Aguilar — September 13, 2010
[...] Sociological Images recently brought attention to research by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting on the race and gender of book reviewers and authors. As a reviewer of color at dotrad as well as Political Media Review, I read it with much interest. [...]
White Male Privilege – Gender and Race in the NYT and C-Span’s Afterwords « Dead Wild Roses — September 17, 2010
[...] work) to show its existence and how thoroughly embedded it is in our culture. A big hat-tip to Sociological Images for the leg work (which I am reposting it its entirety) in condensing the study originally found on [...]
Michelle T. Johnson — January 31, 2011
Well, it's not hard to read this and immediately think about how as an African-American female, I've had three books on workplace diversity published since 2004, the most recent one, "The Diversity Code", published by the American Management Association last fall, yet the coverage of my books by reviewers has never received the number of reviews as my male counterparts. I wouldn't even limit that observation to just white male counterparts. I really do try NOT to jump to the conclusion that something can solely be reduced to an issue of race or gender. But it is interesting that my feeling about this wasn't totally groundless. Now that the issue has been identified, any thoughts on how to create a different reality?
Gaylord Munemo — April 9, 2011
Yeah,this is good work...
Patrick Serna — March 24, 2017
I was just commenting to my Father, the other day, that all of the narrators on TV nature shows are white-male. I guess there is a new TV season just started, and they are all hosted by white-males.
White-males objectively, or scientifically, presenting nature to us, whilst the African-American and the Mexican-American ARE the wild nature?
It is enough to make one want to support the Axis against the Good Guys.
--Martin Serna
karlweber — March 25, 2017
Having spent my whole career in the book publishing industry, I care a lot about this issue. It's important to know that the data in the 2010 article is now quite dated. In the last couple of years, the NY Times Book Review has made a strong effort to give greater prominence to books by women and the ideas of women.
I am looking at the latest issue of the Book Review (dated March 26, 2017), and it contains 10 reviews written by women, 3 written by men. Of four feature articles in this issue, three are by women.
The books reviewed in this issue are not appropriately balanced: ten of the 12 books reviewed are by men. On the other hand, I just checked last week's issue of the Book Review, and the books reviewed included 8 by men and 8 by women. In most recent weeks, the ratio has been quite balanced.
I've been paying attention to this issue for a while, and I've definitely noticed a meaningful change at the Times.
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