Female authors make inroads at major publications – survey

Bylines by women at the New York Times Book Review and the New Republic are among the ‘dramatic increases’ over the last year, according to Vida’s annual survey of the publishing gender split

Female authors and reviewers have found more room on literary pages over the last year, according to the annual Vida review, which has previously shown a major skew towards male writers and reviewers.

The American organisation has tallied up the gender split of reviewers along with the authors being reviewed at major publications including the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and the New Yorker for the last six years. This year, it highlighted improvements at Harper’s, where bylines by women have increased by 11 percentage points to 38% of the total since last year, reflecting “executive editor Christopher Beha’s public commitment to improvement”. Granta magazine continued its “steady progress toward gender parity”, said Vida, with women representing 49% of contributors, while at Poetry magazine 49% of bylines were by women.

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