Sexism in SF - that Big Finish competition

[matgb]

Hmm. The BBC and Big Finish have announced the winner of their short story competition and bibliophile1887 observes that the list is overwhelmingly male. snapesbabe entered and shares the concern (interesting comments discussion in both posts). This put me in mind of a discussion last week at nihilistic_kid's over recent submissions to his magazine:

there is a long history of women writers obscuring their gender ... One hundred percent of the authors who submit their work to Clarkesworld under an initialed byline are women.

I'd like to think that such attitudes are in the past, but looking at my shelves, the overwhelming majority of my SF books are also written by men; my current favourite author may be female, but most of the rest of my picks are male. Is this because less women are writing, because I have 'male' tastes or is there still sexism in the publishing industry?

Having said that, (Cllr) Nick submitted an entry, and as it didn't win, he's posted it to his LJ.

Comments

[mdmnmdllr.livejournal.com]

Mat, if you DO include fantasy as part of an "'all encompassing' classification" for SF, then I think it has to be understood that there is and has been over the last several decades at the very least an extremely large influx of female-authored material. And that's in addition to some very time-honored names, as well, such as Norton or Kurtz.

In fantasy, especially nowadays, I think the equivalence is rather close - certainly closer than people think. If I look in my latest copy of the Sci-Fi Book Club flier, I would NOT be surprised to find an actual predominance of ladies' names within, because of this. And when it comes to fantasy novels, my shelves are AT LEAST as populated with ladies' works as they are with gents'. The genre simply fits, and fits well.

It would fairer to say that there is a lack in hard SF - although I am aware of some few excellent writers ... but I wonder how much of this is simply a lack of INTEREST in writing in the particular genre as opposed to a more sinister reason?

I'd be pleased to debate this on a more exhaustive basis.