A few months ago I stumbled onto The Count, a study conducted by VIDA, an organization that focuses on women in the literary arts. VIDA examined several major literary publications to see how many of the stories, poems, and books they either reviewed or published were written by women.

Their findings were disappointing: in the major literary magazines, women’s writing isn’t published, or reviewed, as frequently as men’s writing is. 

After The Count was published, it seemed like everyone was weighing in about what this meant. Some people said that literary magazines are misogynistic; others said that women are terrible, sentimental writers. Somewhere in the middle were editors who said they strive for gender equality, but don’t get enough submissions from women.

As the responses were dying down, VIDA released another count. This count focused on the Best American series, which is a compilation of the best essays, poetry, and short stories published in this country every year.  

When I heard about the new count, I was worried. The Best American series is important to me—I studied creative writing in college, and often, short stories from the Best American series were used by my professors as examples of good work. They emphasized that these are the writers getting published now, people who have incredible technique and good ideas. Getting into this series is a sign that the literary community embraces your work, and it matters for a writer’s career. It’s the kind of thing you dream about, as a young writer. I hoped that the Best American series did not have a gender gap. 

Unfortunately, it does. The gender disparity in The Best American Short Stories is small: 53% of the stories selected since 1978 were by men, and 47% were by women. The numbers for The Best American Poetry and The Best American Essays, however, were worse: 61% of the poems published since 1988 and 71% of the essays published since 1986 were written by men.

These numbers are problematic, especially when you consider that this is a well-respected series, but it’s hard to know what to do with this information. It seems that there is either a bias (conscious or unconscious) in the literary community against topics women are more likely to write about, or that, like some editors claim, women aren’t submitting their work for publication as often. 

One solution may be as simple as encouraging women to submit their work for publication—and that, I believe, begins with encouraging self-confidence. It takes courage to submit work to a publication when you know they may send you a rejection letter. It takes courage to open a rejection letter, accept it, and then turn around and submit your work again. Girls Inc. programs don’t specifically focus on writing or publishing, but they do encourage girls to develop confidence, take risks, and be proud of themselves, which can certainly lead to the bravery it takes to submit writing. 

How do you think seeing so few women represented in publications affects female writers?