Gender Issues in the Book World
Photo by Jonathan Cooper on Unsplash Female writers have arguably always been somewhat on the back-foot in the literary world, whether that be with writing and publishing, or simply with the reviews that inevitably follow. Yet for a society that claims inclusivity and gender equality, there still remains a shocking amount of unrest in this field. A recent study (2018), by sociologist Dana Beth Weinberg and mathematician Adam Kapelner of Queens College-CUNY, has revealed that books by female authors are on average priced at nearly half (45% less) than that of those written by men. While it is little surprising to see segregation by genre and the different values placed on each genre, this figure is truly staggering. Research shows that there is also a huge lack of female writers in the professional fields of physics, computer science, maths and surgery, which is largely expected to continue for at least the rest of the century. J.K. Rowling (1999) Clearly, male au...