Equality for women in the workplace, and in society at large, has been an issue for a long time now. Movements have come and gone, bringing change to our world. One of publishing’s shortcomings is the imbalance of men and women in high leadership positions, and further, a lack of diversity.
One volunteer group has been tackling the issue of awareness head-on. VIDA is “a research-driven organization” that strives to “increase critical attention to contemporary women’s writing as well as further transparency around gender equality issues in contemporary literary culture” (Source). Every year, this group collects data from “Tier 1” journals, publications, and other top literary presses in order to represent, in hard numbers, the disparities among writers and other participants of the literary world.
The VIDA Count reveals major imbalances at premiere publications both in the US and abroad. For example: The New York Review of Books covered 306 titles by men in 2010 and only 59 by women; The New York Times Book Review covered 524 books by men compared to 283 books written by women (VIDA Count 2010). ~About VIDA
The VIDA count has been an annual event since 2010; a little earlier in the week the 2014 results were published. For the first time, the VIDA conducted a Women of Color count, and for the second year a Larger Literary Landscape count. Read the full report here. The efforts that VIDA is making to illuminate the disparities in the literary world is bringing awareness to a wide population, and hopefully change to balance the inequalities.
Click here to find out more about VIDA!