are there any women here today?
Feb. 2nd, 2015 10:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacDiscussion of Women Destroy Science Fiction, already brought up here, has raised the question of the exactly what is the prominence of women in contemporary SF. Is the Monstrous Regiment taking over, as the sexist squad charges, or are women's places at this table still insecure and unstable?
It could be both, actually, and all feelings on this topic are subjective. What we need is an objective way to measure subjective perceptions, and I've got one: award nomination finalists. What gets nominated for the Hugo - I'm using nominations rather than winners because it gives a much larger but still prestigious dataset - not only gives a consensus of a large number of dedicated readers (as opposed to that of a single Best SF of the Year anthologist) of who's doing the important and high-quality work in the field right then, but it communicates a picture of that field to a larger group of readers.
What I've done is gone all the way back to the institution of Hugo nominations in 1959, counted up the number of stories on the final ballot in the various fiction categories taken together, determined which ones were written by women, and let the computer calculate the percentage.
The raw figures, plus the names of the authors, are below (source), but here's a summary of the trends.
1) Occasional stories by women have been around since the beginning, but they were few and intermittent.
2) Numbers rose in the 1970s, usually 15-20%. Many were by Tiptree (still thought to be a man for most of that time) and Le Guin.
3) A 10-25% range continued to prevail for most of the 1980s, despite many new authors on the ballot: C.J. Cherryh, Octavia Butler, Connie Willis.
4) It rose during the 1990s, above 25% every year from 1990 to 1997, reaching a peak in 1992-93, in both of which years half the stories were by women. Again, more new authors as well as older ones. Willis and Bujold in particular strode the Earth, but they were far from alone.
5) A collapse followed in 1998 to 2009. Numbers were back down to the 15-25% of the 70s and 80s, and in two years only one story each (5%) was by a woman.
6) Revival came in 2010. Each of the five years from then has had 39% or higher, and three of the five years exceeded half. Huge number of authors new to the ballot, including numerous repeat appearances by Seanan McGuire, Mary Robinette Kowal, Rachel Swirsky, Catherynne M. Valente, and Kij Johnson.
ETA: From some of the comments on this io9 post, it may be necessary to reiterate that these are nominees that made the final ballot, not necessarily the winners of the Hugo Award.
I didn't do the Nebulas as well, because 1) I don't have that much time; 2) the Nebula ballot for fiction is usually longer than the Hugo, and thus more time-consuming to work with; 3) it has more authors I haven't heard of than the Hugos do, requiring time-consuming lookups. (It saves a tremendous amount of time when you already know without having to check that, say, Pat Cadigan is a woman but Terry Bisson is a man.) But the impression I get from glancing over the lists is that the percentage of stories by women getting Nebula nominations generally exceeds that of the Hugos, and that the number of winners certainly does.
ETA:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
k6rfm made this chart to visualize the data. The blue line is the data, the red line is a 5-year symmetric moving average. (There's another chart by thnidu in the comments.)
It could be both, actually, and all feelings on this topic are subjective. What we need is an objective way to measure subjective perceptions, and I've got one: award nomination finalists. What gets nominated for the Hugo - I'm using nominations rather than winners because it gives a much larger but still prestigious dataset - not only gives a consensus of a large number of dedicated readers (as opposed to that of a single Best SF of the Year anthologist) of who's doing the important and high-quality work in the field right then, but it communicates a picture of that field to a larger group of readers.
What I've done is gone all the way back to the institution of Hugo nominations in 1959, counted up the number of stories on the final ballot in the various fiction categories taken together, determined which ones were written by women, and let the computer calculate the percentage.
The raw figures, plus the names of the authors, are below (source), but here's a summary of the trends.
1) Occasional stories by women have been around since the beginning, but they were few and intermittent.
2) Numbers rose in the 1970s, usually 15-20%. Many were by Tiptree (still thought to be a man for most of that time) and Le Guin.
3) A 10-25% range continued to prevail for most of the 1980s, despite many new authors on the ballot: C.J. Cherryh, Octavia Butler, Connie Willis.
4) It rose during the 1990s, above 25% every year from 1990 to 1997, reaching a peak in 1992-93, in both of which years half the stories were by women. Again, more new authors as well as older ones. Willis and Bujold in particular strode the Earth, but they were far from alone.
5) A collapse followed in 1998 to 2009. Numbers were back down to the 15-25% of the 70s and 80s, and in two years only one story each (5%) was by a woman.
6) Revival came in 2010. Each of the five years from then has had 39% or higher, and three of the five years exceeded half. Huge number of authors new to the ballot, including numerous repeat appearances by Seanan McGuire, Mary Robinette Kowal, Rachel Swirsky, Catherynne M. Valente, and Kij Johnson.
ETA: From some of the comments on this io9 post, it may be necessary to reiterate that these are nominees that made the final ballot, not necessarily the winners of the Hugo Award.
year total by-women* %noms. wins authors** 1959 23 2.5 11% Ashwell, Henderson, MacLean 1960 10 0 0% 1961 9 1 11% Ashwell 1962 10 0 0% 1963 10 1 10% Bradley 1964 9 1 11% Norton 1965 7 0 0% 1966 10 0 0% 1967 23 0 0% 1968 17 2 12% 1 McCaffrey, Norton 1969 18 2 11% McCaffrey, B. Curtis 1970 15 3 20% 1 Le Guin (2), McCaffrey 1971 15 0 0% 1972 16 3 19% Le Guin (2), McCaffrey 1973 21 4 19% 1 Le Guin, Tiptree (2), Russ 1974 19 5 26% 2 Tiptree (2), McIntyre (2), Le Guin 1975 22 3 14% 1 Le Guin (2), Wilhelm 1976 21 1.5 7% Tuttle, Le Guin 1977 17 3 18% 2 Wilhelm, Tiptree, Le Guin 1978 20 5.5 28% 2 Bradley, J. Robinson, McIntyre, J. Vinge, Tiptree (2) 1979 19 6 32% 2 McIntyre, McCaffrey, Cherryh (2), J. Vinge (2) 1980 21 3 14% McKillip, McIntyre, Willis 1981 21 2.5 12% 1 J. Vinge, Tuttle, Petrey 1982 20 4 20% 1 Cherryh, May, Eisenstein, Wilhelm 1983 22 6 27% 2 Cherryh, Russ, Willis, Eisenstein, Le Guin, Tiptree 1984 20 4 20% 1 MacAvoy, McCaffrey, Willis, Butler 1985 23 3.5 15% 1 Butler, Willis, M. Martin, Killough 1986 20 3 15% Cherryh (2), Tiptree 1987 20 2 10% Willis, Springer 1988 21 6 29% 1 Le Guin, Murphy, Wilhelm, Cadigan, Fowler, Goldstein 1989 21 4 19% 2 Cherryh, Bujold, Willis, E. Gunn 1990 22 9 41% 2 Tepper, Bujold, Lindholm, Willis (2), Moffett, Kress, Charnas, E. Gunn 1991 20 5 25% 1 Bujold, Murphy, Cadigan, Soukup, Willis 1992 23 12 52% 2 Bujold, Bull, McCaffrey, J. Vinge, Kress (2), Rusch, Willis (3), Cadigan, Soukup 1993 20 10 50% 3 Willis (2), McHugh (2), Kagan, Sargent, Cadigan, Shwartz, Kress, Soukup 1994 21 6 29% 1 Kress (2), Murphy, Willis, Soukup, B. McKenna 1995 22 6 27% 1 Bujold, Kress, Le Guin (3), Wilhelm 1996 21 6.5 31% 1 Willis, Le Guin (2), Shwartz, Kress, McHugh, Friesner 1997 21 7 33% 1 Bujold, Moon, Rosenblum, McHugh, Le Guin, Charnas, Willis 1998 21 1 5% Fowler 1999 23 6 26% 1 Willis, M. Russell, Asaro, Rusch, Kress, Klages 2000 21 5 24% 1 Bujold, Rowling, Willis, Baker, Arnason 2001 21 5 24% 2 Rowling, Hopkinson, Asaro, Rusch (2) 2002 21 4 19% Bujold, Willis, Clough, Le Guin 2003 21 3 14% Le Guin, McHugh, Gloss 2004 21 4 19% 1 Bujold, Baker, Willis, Asaro 2005 20 3 15% 2 S. Clarke, Bujold, Link 2006 20 3 15% 1 Willis, Link, Lanagan 2007 20 1 5% Novik 2008 21 4 19% 2 Willis, Rusch, Kress, E. Bear 2009 20 4 20% 2 Kress, E. Bear, K. Johnson, Kowal 2010 23 9 39% Cherie Priest, Valente, Baker, Kress, Swirsky, Griffith, Foster, Jemisin, K. Johnson 2011 19 10 53% 2 Willis, McGuire, Bujold, Jemisin, Swirsky, Hand, Bodard, Kowal, Vaughn, K. Johnson 2012 21 11 52% 3 Walton, McGuire (2), K. Johnson, Kowal, Valente, C. Gilman, Anders, Swirsky, Yu, Fulda 2013 18 11 61% 1 Bujold, McGuire (4), Kress, Bodard (2), Cadigan, Valente, K. Johnson 2014 19 7.5 39% 2 Leckie, McGuire, Valente, Klages, Kowal, Bodard, Samatar, Swirsky *A half-story is one co-authored by a woman and a man. **Where an author uses multiple bylines on different stories, I've combined them under one name. NOTE: I don't guarantee complete accuracy of the counts. I haven't triple-checked my work.
I didn't do the Nebulas as well, because 1) I don't have that much time; 2) the Nebula ballot for fiction is usually longer than the Hugo, and thus more time-consuming to work with; 3) it has more authors I haven't heard of than the Hugos do, requiring time-consuming lookups. (It saves a tremendous amount of time when you already know without having to check that, say, Pat Cadigan is a woman but Terry Bisson is a man.) But the impression I get from glancing over the lists is that the percentage of stories by women getting Nebula nominations generally exceeds that of the Hugos, and that the number of winners certainly does.
ETA:
k6rfm made this chart to visualize the data. The blue line is the data, the red line is a 5-year symmetric moving average. (There's another chart by thnidu in the comments.)
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no subject
Date: 2015-02-03 12:33 am (UTC)Those who decry the Hugos as going to women and "social justice warriors" have complained that this has been the trend of recent years. I suspect Sad Puppies II had something to do with the dip in the trend last year.
a picture is worth...
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Date: 2015-02-03 03:21 am (UTC)It all depends on what the overall and comparative quality of those stories is, in the perception of the people doing the choosing. That's what a statistic on the Hugo nominees tells us, that nothing not sorted by someone's perception of quality within the field does.
Let us hypothesize that the trend of vampire romances becomes so popular that it doubles the number of sf/f novels written by women each year. That would have a huge effect on the percentage of novels published. But it would be unlikely to have any effect on the Hugos. But that wouldn't mean that the Hugo voters liked women writers any less.
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