Think that Women’s Studies and the opening of the literary canon mean that gender inequities in publishing are a thing of the past? Check out these stats, compiled by VIDA: Women In Literary Arts. The data, which they gathered last year as well, OVERWHELMINGLY suggest a disturbingly deep and widespread bias. Although this caused quite the kerfuffle in literary blogs and in editorials, seemingly little has changed within the last year.
This is interesting (as well as appalling) on many levels. One puzzle that strikes me: we usually hear about girls being steered away from the STEM fields from an early age. If young women are rewarded for their prowess in the language arts early in their educations, why is there this reverse at the top levels, where literacy becomes literature? “Sexism is pervasive” may be an accurate answer, but its grand narrative vagueness is unsatisfying and ultimately unhelpful. Where is the glass ceiling located? In MFA programs? Journalism schools? How is it justified? Does the feminized construction of the American reader create a backlash against real women writers? Is the implicitly masculine Romantic genius still a compelling category for understanding literary writing?
The field of Book Studies, with its theories and methods for understanding the nexus of authorship, reading, and publishing, and its ability to look for parallels in the past as well as project the future, is well situated to tackle this problem. I would like to think that scholars feel some urgency in taking this on. Let’s not just leave it to the blogosphere.
Mechanick Exercises 
Ok, you’re on! Tackling it on Twitter in our conversation about big data and book history.
Lisa,
I found the VIDA report extremely interesting, too, and, unfortunately, not that surprising.
I’ve had several students do projects on the history of various literary anthologies and the gender of the authors represented. One of my MA students a few years ago wrote her thesis on the Norton Anthology of English literature’s 18th-century section in terms of the authors reprsented and the percentage of works and pages each received. She traced all the changes from the anthology’s inception to its 21st-century editions. Very little change occurred at all until Stephen Greenblatt became a co-editor–and even here the status quo pretty much still held.
It is a very worrying report but I’d like one further piece of information. What is the gender balance in the population of people who might be expected to contribute to the various publications? Without this, it’s hard to tell whether the problem exists with the editors/editorial boards or earlier in women’s careers.