Female bestsellers: A cross-national study of gender inequality and the popular–highbrow culture divide in fiction book production, 1960–2009

Verboord, Marc

doi:10.1177/0267323112459433

Cited by 19 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 43 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…They concluded that, in both direct and indirect ways, existing cultural frameworks about art and gender disadvantage 'the amount and type of legitimacy that female artists can accrue' (Schmutz & Faupel 2010, 685). This is consistent with research investigating the experience of French professional artists (musicians, actors and dancers; Coulangeon et al 2005), arts management (Herron et al 1998) and gender inequality in the literary fields (Verboord 2012).…”

Section: Women In Creative Artssupporting

confidence: 89%

Destined to Design? How and Why Australian Women Choose to Study Industrial Design

Lockhart¹,

Miller²

2016

Int J Art Design Ed

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite over three decades of legislation and initiatives designed to tackle the traditional gender divide in the science, technology and design fields, only a quarter of the registered architects in Australia are women. There are no statistics available for other design disciplines, with little known about why women choose design as a career path and who or what influences this decision. This qualitative research addresses this knowledge gap, through semistructured in-depth interviews conducted with 19 Australian women who completed an industrial (product) design degree. Thematic analysis revealed three key themes: childhood aptitude and exposure; significant experiences and people; and design as a serendipitous choice. The findings emphasise the importance of early exposure to design as a potential career choice, highlighting the critical role played by parents, teachers, professionals and social networks. KEYWORDS industrial design, design education, womenDesign (the adaptive creative process of creating an object or process) and design thinking (adopting a creative approach to problem solving) have been identified as providing the innovative interdisciplinary framework needed to tackle key twenty-first century challenges, such as population ageing and climate change (Brown 2008). Yet, despite the current attention emphasising the value of design, one issue remains under-studied: women are poorly represented in many design professions in particular with industrial design remaining a male-dominated field. This qualitative study seeks to address this knowledge gap, investigating why women choose design as a career path and who or what influences this decision.Although there is significant anecdotal reporting suggesting a gender disparity, particularly in terms of women's representation and visibility in high-profile design awards and senior leadership roles (Anthony 2001;Fowler & Wilson 2004), exact statistics on women's participation remain scarce, dated and fragmented. At university, enrolment statistics show that women typically comprise approximately a third to half of the design student population; upon graduation, however, they appear to be much less visible in the profession, in terms of winning local, state or national design awards and holding senior roles. This gender distinction in terms of career progression and visibility is apparent through the architecture

show abstract

Section: Women In Creative Artssupporting

confidence: 89%

Destined to Design? How and Why Australian Women Choose to Study Industrial Design

Lockhart¹,

Miller²

2016

Int J Art Design Ed

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Perhaps because of this, the literary novel emerged in the late 19th century as a separate, less popular but more prestigious male-dominated genre (Tuchman & Fortin, 2012; for a case study, see Corse & Westervelt, 2002;Yaeger, 1987). This continued an evolving trend of gender differences in the typical genres of books written, and women still seem to be under-recognized for the literary value of their works (Verboord, 2012). This extends to many other art fields and is an international phenomenon (Berkers, Verboord, & Weij, 2014).…”

Section: Gender and Authorshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although many publisher‐related sites have hosted statistics about popular books and some surveys have analyzed the preferences of readers, there do not seem to have been systematic analyses of the popularity of books on a large scale by author gender and genre, other than small scale analyses of bestsellers or literary awards (e.g., Verboord, ). The current article fills this gap using data from Goodreads.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Book genre and author gender: Romance>Paranormal‐Romance to Autobiography>Memoir

Thelwall

2016

Asso for Info Science & Tech

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although gender differences are known to exist in the publishing industry and in reader preferences, there is little public systematic data about them. This article uses evidence from the book‐based social website Goodreads to provide a large scale analysis of 50 major English book genres based on author genders. The results show gender differences in authorship in almost all categories and gender differences the level of interest in, and ratings of, books in a minority of categories. Perhaps surprisingly in this context, there is not a clear gender‐based relationship between the success of an author and their prevalence within a genre. The unexpected almost universal authorship gender differences should give new impetus to investigations of the importance of gender in fiction and the success of minority genders in some genres should encourage publishers and librarians to take their work seriously, except perhaps for most male‐authored chick‐lit.

show abstract

“…Some of these drivers were explored in the literature [3,4]: they are book critics [5], the author's and fans' circle of friends [6,7], celebrities [8], online reviews [9,10] and word of mouth [11]. The writing style of the author [12,13], the amount of publicity [14], the timing of the book release [15], awardwinning [16] or already bestseller [17] status of the book, the genre of the book and even the gender of the author [18,19] are among the factors considered in past research. Yet, which books become successful and how they reach this status remains a mystery.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Success in books: a big data approach to bestsellers

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Reading remains the preferred leisure activity for most individuals, continuing to offer a unique path to knowledge and learning. As such, books remain an important cultural product, consumed widely. Yet, while over 3 million books are published each year, very few are read widely and less than 500 make it to the New York Times bestseller lists. And once there, only a handful of authors can command the lists for more than a few weeks. Here we bring a big data approach to book success by investigating the properties and sales trajectories of bestsellers. We find that there are seasonal patterns to book sales with more books being sold during holidays, and even among bestsellers, fiction books sell more copies than nonfiction books. General fiction and biographies make the list more often than any other genre books, and the higher a book's initial place in the rankings, the longer the book stays on the list as well. Looking at patterns characterizing authors, we find that fiction writers are more productive than nonfiction writers, commonly achieving bestseller status with multiple books. Additionally, there is no gender disparity among bestselling fiction authors but nonfiction, most bestsellers are written by male authors. Finally we find that there is a universal pattern to book sales. Using this universality we introduce a statistical model to explain the time evolution of sales. This model not only reproduces the entire sales trajectory of a book but also predicts the total number of copies it will sell in its lifetime, based on its early sales numbers. The analysis of the bestseller characteristics and the discovery of the universal nature of sales patterns with its driving forces are crucial for our understanding of the book industry, and more generally, of how we as a society interact with cultural products.

show abstract

Female bestsellers: A cross-national study of gender inequality and the popular–highbrow culture divide in fiction book production, 1960–2009

Cited by 19 publications

References 43 publications

Destined to Design? How and Why Australian Women Choose to Study Industrial Design

Destined to Design? How and Why Australian Women Choose to Study Industrial Design

Book genre and author gender: Romance>Paranormal‐Romance to Autobiography>Memoir

Success in books: a big data approach to bestsellers

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About