Susan Hagan


Despite significant gains, women are not treated equally or fairly in publishing and we appear to be sliding backward. Inequality is evident in the dismal number of women writers who are being published and reviewed in magazines, according to recent studies in Canada and the United States. Men dominate freelance magazine writing, film and television, and garner more book reviews in newspapers, magazines and literary publications despite publishing a generally equal number of books.  

Canadian Women in Literary Arts, founded by Gillian Jerome, is a collective of women writers who formed a group in spring 2012 to study the trends in women’s writing, including a comparison of book reviews based on gender, and the gender breakdown by genre of books submitted to the Governor General’s Awards.

CWILA examined book reviews in Canadian literary publications and found a profound gender imbalance: 23 per cent of books reviewed by The Walrus were written by women; Canadian Notes and Queries was 25 per cent; 28 per cent at the Literary Review of Canada; 29 per cent at the Fiddlehead; 33 per cent at the National Post; 37 per cent at SubTerrain; 38 per cent at GEIST and 40 per cent at The Globe and Mail. All but two of these were headed by male editors; The Walrus and the Literary Review of Canada had both men and women involved in assigning reviews at the time of the study. Meanwhile, where women headed reviewing assignments, the number of books written by women was much higher: This magazine was 58 per cent; Canadian Literature was 53 per cent; Event was 52 per cent and Prism was 64 per cent. Quill & Quire was the only publication in the study with a male editor in charge of reviews where women came out on top at 54 per cent.  

Book reviews written by women were also underrepresented at many publications, according to the CWILA study: 16 per cent for the National Post, 17 per cent at The Walrus; 24 per cent at the Literary Review of Canada; 32 per cent at Fiddlehead, 36 per cent at The Globe and Mail and 40 per cent at GEIST.

“It’s very difficult to talk about (sexism in literature), without some kind of proof, without some kind of substantive data,” Jerome said, adding that the project started as an email list-serve which has grown to 70 female poets, novelists, academics, and critics (some of whom helped track data).

CWILA found that despite the dismal number of women reviewed, submissions to the Governor General’s Awards from 2009 to 2011 were virtually equal—men submitted 1,482 books while women submitted 1,463 books: a difference of about one per cent. These numbers tell us that even though women are writing plenty of books, they are being reviewed at extremely low rates. What did women write? Fiction was split evenly by gender. Men dominated non-fiction at 68 per cent and drama at 60 per cent. Women writers were more likely to write children’s books, accounting for 72 per cent of the total. Poetry and translation were close to parity (48 per cent and 51 per cent of women respectively). Men won the awards in all categories except drama and children’s illustration. The 2012 Giller Prize long list included eight women and five men—so why are there so few book reviews for and by women in publications?

Jerome, a Vancouver-based writer and sessional lecturer at University of British Columbia, says that as she was entering the public role of writer and helping to organize the Vancouver Poetry Festival at the old Woodward's Building in east Vancouver, she sensed a silencing of women. She was also living the life of a writer while touring her book of poetry, Red Nest, which she wrote over 10 years while raising young children. Even though she and her partner, poet Brad Cran, had invited an equal number of male and female participants to the conference, women didn’t tend to speak up, she said.

“It was very clear to me that the male poets had really taken over the discursive space,” she said in a recent interview. “I was really perplexed by it … There were all kinds of women there who spoke very eloquently, but there was also a lot of silencing and a lot of quiet women.

“I was really marked by it. It took me months to figure out how to respond to it,” Jerome said, adding that she came upon an American tally of gender in writing, as well as a blog by Natalie Walschots, that counted reviews by gender in the National Post, which found that of 14 reviews, only two books were written by women. “I had questions about that. My most obvious question was, what about other literary outlets across the nation? I wanted to find out, so I dove in and started counting.”

CWILA’s effort to gather concrete numbers follows the comprehensive study of VIDA, an American feminist group launched in 2009 that focuses on women in literary arts. It took its second survey of magazines to find out the rates of women and men who are being published in major magazines, as well as the gender disparity in book reviews. In 2011, VIDA found that The Atlantic published articles by 235 men compared with 91 women; The London Review of Books contained 504 men to 117 women; The New Yorker had 613 articles by men compared with 242 by women. CBC did its own count of women’s bylines last year: Toronto Life had a 3-1 ratio of men-women writers over six issues; The Literary Review of Canada had a 4-1 ratio, not including poetry; the New York Review of Books was 6-1; the New Republic is 5-1. VIDA also found that books written by women are reviewed less frequently in mainstream publications: at Harpers they reviewed 10 books by women, compared with 23 by men. 

Gender equity ignored
Merilyn Simonds, chair of the Writers Union of Canada, said their organization undertook a similar study in the 1990s and found the same kind of results. She said gender disparity is once again a serious issue that gets overshadowed by other major concerns in the writing community, including copyright laws and the impacts of new media. As for the scarcity of women’s books being reviewed, she said that gender inequality is likely fallout from the disappearance of book sections in most publications. And editors—fewer and busier than before—don’t have time to ponder gender representation as they fight against the clock to publish. 

“We were distraught at the findings (from the original survey), and we worked really hard at changing things,” Simonds said. “And in fact things did change, for quite a while, (but) they have since gone into serious decline in the last five years or so… I don’t know what quite to make of it. Clearly we have to keep the pressure up.”

CBC’s Sunday Edition featured the topic of the lack of women writers being published in major markets in 2011 after Anne Hays, founding editor of Storyscape Journal, returned an issue of The New Yorker with a pointed note after noticing that only “three, out of the 150 pages in the magazine, were penned by women.” She appeared on the Sunday Edition, for a roundtable discussion about “the startling lack of female writers.”

Hays suggested that sexism is to blame; that there is still a bias against female writers; that editors believe men will research more intensely while women will focus more on personal narrative. She wrote in a note to the editors: “Women are not actually a minority group, nor is there a shortage, in the world, of female writers. The publishing industry is replete with female editors, and it would be too obvious for me to point out to you that The New Yorker masthead has a fair number of female editors in its ranks. And so I am baffled, outraged, saddened and a bit depressed that, though some would claim our country’s sexism problem ended in the late ’60s, the most prominent and respected literary magazine in the country can’t find space in its pages for women’s voices in the year 2011.”

Editors from The Walrus, Mother Jones and Canadian Lawyer magazine, who also appeared on the CBC panel discussion, concurred that gender disparity exists, but insisted that they choose the “best writers.” Only Mother Jones actively sought female contributors and had near gender parity.

Assigning editors still tend to be older white men who are busy people who likely haven’t thought about gender while assigning stories, says Clara Jeffery of Mother Jones, during the CBC panel discussion. When more women took the top ranks of editor jobs at Mother Jones, their percentage of women writers changed from 25 per cent to 45 per cent, Jeffery said. On the one hand, she agrees that editors have to produce the best issue for their audience, but if half of their audience is disgusted by the lack of women representation, they aren’t actually serving that purpose.

John Macfarlane, editor and co-publisher at The Walrus, told CBC Sunday Edition that he doesn’t receive as many pitches from women and that his publication takes a gender-blind approach to selecting writers; remember that only 23 per cent of books reviewed by The Walrus were written by women and only 17 per cent were reviewed by women. Macfarlane said the problem is the talent pool.

“There are not as many female writers standing outside the door knocking wanting to get in…” he said.

According to a 2008 survey, a sample of 362 members of the Writers Guild of Alberta showed a gender breakdown of 23 per cent male and 77 per cent female. Though not all members of the Writers Guild are published authors, the survey certainly indicates how many women want to write. Sandy Crawley, executive director of the Professional Writers Association of Canada, estimates that its membership, which represents mainly professional published freelance writers, is at least 60 per cent women. The Writers Union of Canada conducted a poll in 2011: 64 per cent of respondents were women; 35 per cent men (though statistically, women may be more likely to respond to polls, women certainly make up a significant portion of the Union’s 1,900 members). So, what stands in our way if it isn’t our numbers? 

“In an ideal world we would have gender balance,” Macfarlane said. “But as we all know, it isn’t an ideal world… I think there’s a supply side problem here. I also think that change in the media world takes place organically,” he said.

Ann Friedman, an editor with Feministing.com, responded to Macfarlane’s comments: “Talking about organic change and change in the gender breakdown of newsrooms themselves… that wasn’t organic. There were lawsuits to make sure that women had better access to the upper echelon of newsrooms…When it comes to diversity issues—I don’t think that things change for the better organically.”

Indeed, Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) was founded in 1985 to even the playing field by educating the public and litigating equality rights of women and girls, as guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Today, almost 37 per cent of editors and writers in the American newsroom are women, when 40 years ago we were relegated to the role of secretary and social column. Without an organization to help, few women would be CEOs or editors.

Danielle Pafunda, an American writer, says that using the slush pile numbers is mere excuse because many stories are assigned. Pafunda, in her online article Why the Submission Numbers Don’t Count, says editors need to acknowledge the gender problem and seek submissions from women writers.

 “Historically, an editor’s job has been to actively engage writers, to search out the new, bring the under-acknowledged into the light, remind us of those talented souls who’ve fallen off the radar, and discover the next big thing. It’s one of the perks, it’s fun.”

A silencing of women: A wall of men
Aritha van Herk, an author and professor of Canadian Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Calgary, says one reason women writers are not being published as frequently as their male counterparts after a decades-long climb is because this era has shifted back to the masculine topic about money. Generally speaking—which is always dangerous—women’s perspectives, history, biology and struggles are different from men’s, van Herk said. Women’s writing tends to focus on different issues and it tends to be dismissed, disparaged and ignored, just as Carol Shield’s work was called “kitchen sink realism” in the '90s. But women have valid and necessary voices that are in danger of disappearing during this era of impending economic, environmental and political doom. van Herk says women’s writing has always been underappreciated, but there’s also a squeezing out of women in the current climate and men are still largely driving the topics in public conversation.

“In the ‘70s, people began to realize that they could not dismiss the woman’s voice,” van Herk said. “The fight from the ‘70s was really felt in the 80s — it’s when Margaret Atwood got really famous … It was a recognition that this was a voice that had not been heard. (With) the prosperity of the '90s, and the reverse now, we’re all about the economy. All we care about is money. There are women who are really good with money and are money machines, very high powered CEOs of companies, but I don’t think women care about it that much. They care about it, but I don’t think that it is a motivator and a subject for them.”

Men dominated the nominees in this year’s National Magazine Awards. In Business, there were seven male and three female nominees; eight men to two women in the Columns category; eight men to two women in Humour; seven to three in Investigative reporting; eight men to three women in Politics and Public Interest; seven men to three women in Travel; nine men to two women in Science, Technology and the Environment; and seven men to three women in the Society category. It was closer in some: six men to five women in “One of a Kind;” six men to four women in the Essays; Fiction was five men to three women; Personal Journalism was six men to four women; Profiles was evenly split; and five men to four women under Health and Family. Women dominated Homes and Gardens at seven women to two men. 

van Herk says that at a time when there are fewer well-paid, freelance or creative writing opportunities, men are more likely to sit down, pump out a pitch and get paid. But, she says, editors of magazines and publishing houses need to be reminded that women have strong voices that need to be heard.

“I’m an avid reader of Harpers and The New York Times, and I get so mad; it’s man after man after man. I’d really like to read something different,” van Herk said.

Women “are more tentative about our abilities and our ideas. It makes me want to start getting annoyed … We’re getting to the point where we have to get really tough and do that battle again. It is unfortunate, but I think we have to.” 

The dearth of women writers is a silencing, van Herk says. And it’s happening in an era when feminism—the cause that fought to have women’s voices recognized—is all but vanished, with only 20 per cent of Canadian women calling themselves feminists. A couple of decades ago, someone powerful whispered in the wind that the war was over—equality had been achieved. Work harder for significantly less pay, raise the kids, clean the house, and complain no more. In 1989, we toppled a penis statue in the town square and the media cracked the story. In her book, The End of Men and the Rise of Women, Hanna Rosin even claims that we are headed for a matriarchal society citing our success in academia and weathering the economic turbulence. She shrugs off those pesky barriers that still exist—that have always existed—for women. But we celebrate our equality too soon and at our own peril: there is more optimism about our equality than evidence that it actually exists.

“One of the reasons we’ve been quieted is because we forget our history,” van Herk said. “And until we remember that history teaches us quite lot, we’re going to think that we don’t have to pay attention; that we’ve all got equal rights carved in the Charter of Rights, so we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

We are sliding
We need to think about women’s climb—again—because our voices are disappearing dramatically from the public discourse. Female writers in American film and television plunged to just 15 per cent in 2010-11, down from 35 per cent in 2006-2007, according to San Diego University’s Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film. Female radio news directors in the U.S. dropped from 20 per cent in 2010 to just 10.7 per cent last year—the lowest ever recorded in 17 years of the Radio Television Digital News Association’s survey.

In some cases, women are also earning less than we used to when we do pursue our writing careers. A report by Societe des auteurs de radio, television et cinema (SARTEC), representing French-language screenwriters, found that in 2008 women’s participation in higher budget films had fallen dramatically since 1998. While the proportion of its members who were women fell only by four per cent, the highest earning women had fallen from 48 per cent of members in 1998 to just 30 per cent of members in 2008. The report states that women more often took jobs in low budget film work and supported themselves by other means. In addition, women were applying for, and receiving grants, at extremely low rates.

Our institutions and our movements that fought to help raise women up collectively have simply vanished—at least 33 women’s organizations have had funding slashed under the Conservative Government. The Marian Engel Award was established in 1986 to assist a woman writer in mid-career. The hope was to encourage a woman writer in mid-career to write another book, said Don Oravec, executive director with the Writers Trust of Canada, which administered the award. Alice Munro, Carol Shields, Jane Urquhart, Barbara Gowdy among many others benefited from a $10,000 (starting in 2001, $15,000) annual prize. In 2008, the Marian Engel Award was merged with the Timothy Findley Award, a $15,000 annual prize originally intended to go to a male writer, to become the Writers Trust Engel/Findley Award.

“They wanted to create an award that was specifically for women writers because they did perceive at that time that there was inequality,” Oravec said. “By the time 2007 came around, we looked at this and we really felt that there were so many women publishing and so many women editors in the business, there were so many great women writers winning awards and doing quite well, we felt that it was time to merge it with the Timothy Findley prize and award a prize that had a little more money and a little more oomph behind it. That was our thinking. Also 2007, as you remember was a horrible time for the economy, and for charities in particular. We took an awful hit that year and we had to figure out a way to continue to balance our budget and one of the ways to do that was to merge those two prizes which weren’t sponsored.”

The new prize was worth $25,000 (a $5,000 saving, plus the cost of paying an additional jury). In the last four years, the award has gone to men three times; the exception is Miriam Toews.

“We didn’t get any criticism at all about the fact that we were no longer giving out gender-based prizes,” he said. “I do assume that over time, that balance will sort of work its way out; it tends to with all of our awards over time,” he said. The 2012 award will be announced in November. 

Simonds said that as a writer, she understands that the merger was a practical decision in hard times, but it was also a great loss for women writers. “It was one of those awards that had gained a great deal of prestige,” she said. “That was what (women writers) were striving for. It was a mark that one had achieved a certain body of work, a certain weight of influence, a certain respectability, with a certain place in the literary landscape. And having it as a neutral award doesn’t have the same impact.

“I value my gender and I would like to be acknowledged as a woman writer. It means something to me.”

Sticking our necks out
Whether women remain quiet in a conference room at the Woodward's building at the Vancouver Poetry Conference or silenced by not being promoted and published, we can look to women writers who have succeeded, despite barriers. Women’s writing is important because we perceive what is imperceptible to men, according to Michele Landsberg, a columnist with the Toronto Star, in her 2011 collection of columns Writing the Revolution.  

“Shoved to the sidelines of power, the majority of women have the luxury of looking at the world from a different perspective…” writes Landsberg, who has also helped to establish rape crisis centres, women’s health organizations, and became an activist for women and children on welfare, refugees and battered women. 

With women’s writings comes progress: The United Nations Security Council has called on all nations to include women in positions of power and peace negotiations, and they are tallying up the rape, torture, and mutilation of women across the globe, writes Landsberg, who also published columns about abortion, equal pay, national child care, women under oppressive regimes, physical and sexual abuse, rape as an instrument of war. She wrote in 1998 that until women began writing history, the torture, rape and murder of women and children in war zones “had not been particularly noted.” 

Women writers look at our topics in a way that pricks at contemporary values. Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World, is a prime example of a writer who smartly cracks apart the magical positive thinking movement, calling breast cancer pink campaigns “infantile.”

Ehrenreich, who has a PhD in biology and is a breast cancer survivor, urges more research and critical thinking to replace pink teddy bears and feel-good campaigns: “Everything in mainstream breast cancer culture serves, no doubt inadvertently, to tame and normalize the disease. The diagnosis may be disastrous, but there are those cunning rhinestone angel pins to buy and races to train for.” 

Naomi Wolf points out in The Beauty Myth that women are groomed to view the world teetering on high heels and preening in magnified mirrors, to criticize wrinkles and body fat instead of the inherent unfairness—and potential equity—around us. Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, was certain that women’s failures were a result of social unfairness. She was called “a hyena in petticoats” and a “philosophizing serpent.” Decades after she was discredited as an amoral threat to decent society by men in power, her manifesto—tattered from being passed from hand to hand in secret—re-emerged in the hands of women who would fight for our right to divorce, own property, vote and control our reproduction.

After this long battle for women’s rights, we are now slipping in this tide of rising social conservatism. As Susan Faludi points out in The Terror Dream, newspaper columnists demeaned women writers such as Susan Sontag, Katha Pollitt, Naomi Klein, and Barbara Kingsolver because they weren’t presenting “swashbuckling, pro-war rhetoric” following 9-11. She notes that The Chicago Tribune called Sontag “stupefyingly dumb;” New York Post columnist Rod Dreher called her “despicable;” The Chicago Sun-Times succinctly presented its views of Katha Pollitt in the headline “Oh, Shut Up.” These women writers had the guts to challenge manipulative rhetoric and ignorant rantings: But the bullying of women’s words—especially by colleagues—destroys the climate where ideas and visions can evolve. 

“With so many feminist-minded writers disenfranchised by the post 9-11 press, such columns (demeaning feminist writers) stood unchallenged. There was no counter-point perspective to blunt its force. In fact, a feminist perspective on any topic was increasingly AWOL,” writes Faludi in The Terror Dream.

Women may not write like men, as van Herk points out, but if we get opportunities to develop our potentials as writers, we can tackle the world’s topics in our own ways. Naomi Klein, incidentally Landsberg’s daughter-in-law, spun the male narrative of war and money on its head in Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which examined shock and awe tactics in developing nations, under the manipulation of Milton Friedman’s free market economic revolution. Like No Logo—Klein’s take on branding—it is a thoroughly researched and reasoned piece that offers a unique perspective. 

van Herk says more women need to take their voices seriously and “be tough about it. Naomi Klein is an example of someone who is tough about what she believes,” van Herk said. “We just have to hope women get obsessed enough, and angry enough, to tell their stories.”

An unbalanced structure
Gillian Jerome was never fooled by the hype that we live in a post-feminist world. She has annoyed and bored classmates and colleagues throughout her life with her core belief that the world isn’t fair to women. The solution, says Jerome, is to help female writers rise up. CWILA has already raised $3,500 to go towards a critic-in-residence program, which would pay reviewers a $2,000 stipend to write reviews. Jerome wants to raise more money to pay administrative staff, and pay writers for their essays and their time. She also encourages women to buy and read books written by women, as well as review them. 

“When we talked on the list serve about why they don’t review, women said that ‘I’m already under paid as a writer, quite frankly I can’t afford to.’ It’s really common for women to make less money than men—they have all kinds of possible situations in their lives—disproportionate amount of domestic work, or being overworked in other jobs that they have. Thereby, it might be difficult to have time to review,” Jerome said. 

The decline of the movement—whether through aggressive obliteration of a suppressed group or the voluntary retreat of fatigued combatants—means that women must face the powers that push us down as individuals, without the support of a collective. We face our bosses, the media, our editors, our colleagues, without group clout because the collective voice of feminism is dormant. Meanwhile, Jerome says, male writers continue to lift each other up by sharing resources and advice to bring up-and-comers into a public role, as they have for generations. 

The sisterhood must rise
“Now women have to catch up,” Jerome said.” At least a couple of women said how shocked they were to learn they could even pitch a book review. They didn’t even know. This has to do with mentorship and really how women are brought through a literary system . … We’ve had 200 years [in Canada] of this very well established male structure in which all kinds of men have supported each other to merge onto the scene and make a name for themselves as writers and critics. It’s a lot of guys finding a lot of guys they like and supporting them into a public role.”

Some women, and men, argue that individual women need to stop complaining, take responsibility and get to work. Leah McClaren, who was on the authors’ committee of the Writers’ Trust of Canada, which decided to merge the Marian Engel and Timothy Findley awards, wrote in a recent column in The Globe and Mail that “assessing the literary landscape, the committee decided that a gendered prize was no longer needed—and we were right. It was a wise choice, and one that reflected the progress (if not outright dominance) of female Canadian writers on a level playing field.”

Or, as Sarah Silverman recently told Johanna Schneller of The Globe and Mail “I think if you’re good enough, you can’t be denied. That’s what will slowly change things, if they’re to be changed. Not [baby voice] ‘That’s not fair!’ Because that’s not cool, and it doesn’t behoove a woman’s cause. Complaining doesn’t get anybody anywhere. How about just be great.” 

But not complaining means ignoring systemic problems. Not complaining is agreeing to being silenced. Not complaining is falling for just another trick to shut us up. 

Sources:
Books:
Ehrenreich, Barbara: Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World (2010)
Heilbrun, G. Carolyn: Writing a Woman’s Life (1988)
Klein, Naomi: Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)
Landsberg, Michele: Writing the Revolution (2011)
Wolf, Naomi: The Beauty Myth (1991)
Wollstonecraft, Mary: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

 News clippings and websites
1.CBC Sunday Edition/masonneuve.org: http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=1803714396
2.Ms. Magazine An Open letter to The New Yorker, msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/01/03/an-open-letter-to-the-new-yorker/
3.National Magazine Awards: www.magazine-awards.com
4.Governor General’s Award: www.gg.ca/document.aspx?id187
5.Writers Trust Award web site: www.writerstrust.com
6.Media Report to Women (www.mediareporttowomen.com/statistics.htm) : 
a.US: Women working fulltime at newspapers: 36.92 per cent. (American Society of News Editors, 2011)
b.While women were more successful than men in securing jobs one year after school in 2011 from journalism and communications programs, women were disproportionately specializing in advertising and public relations. Analysts said women might prefer the steady hours to balance family responsibility, however women in the PR industry said they took these jobs because they were hired. (Cox Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research, 2011).
c.Percentage for women in the US radio news work force declined: news directors dropped to just 10.7 per cent, from 20 per cent last year, the lowest in 17 years of RTNDA’s survey. (Radio Television Digital News Association, 2011)
7.San Diego University’s Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film: 
a.See SDSU report at: http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/files/2010-2011_Boxed_In_Exec_Summ.pdf
b.In the 2006-2007 television season, 35 percent of the writers of broadcast network, prime-time programs were women, according to an annual study by San Diego State University's Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. In the 2010-2011 season, that number had dropped by more than half, to 15 percent.
8.Women in Hollywood: Guest Post: A Report from the 25th Annual Gemini Awards, by Siobhan Devlin (posted by Melissa Silverstein, Dec. 2010) - 81 per cent of the winners are men, 19 per cent women.
9.http://www.pleaseadjustyourset.com/research/2010-Needs-Assessment-Gender-Based-Impact-Analysis.pdf: A report by the SARTEC found that between 1998 and 2008, the proportion of its members who were women fell slightly (4 per cent), while the proportion of women amongst the highest earners had fallen significantly, making up only 30 per cent of members in 2008, compared to 48 per cent of members in 1998. These data suggest that the rate of participation by women in higher budget films has not kept pace with respect to 1998 levels. Women more often took work in low budget film work and supported themselves by other means. Also, women were applying for, and receiving grants, at extremely low rates.
10.www.vida.org: 2010 and 2011 studies of gender trends
11.http://www.vidaweb.org/why-the-submissions-numbers-dont-count, Danielle Pafunda, March 6, 2012
12.The Huffington Post, Why Is Television Losing Women Writers? Veteran Producers Weigh In, by Maureen Ryan, posted Sept. 8, 2011
13.The Globe and Mail, Thelma and Louise would Blush. Johanna Schneller, June 25, 2011
14.http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/opinion/numbers-dont-lie-addressing-the-gender-gap-in-literary-publishing/7161/
15.http://www.vidaweb.org/why-the-submissions-numbers-dont-count, Danielle Pafunda, Why the Submission Numbers Don’t Count
16.cwila.com (Canadian Women in Literary Arts)
17.Goodbye to the Orange Prize, Leah McClaren, The Globe and Mail, May 25, 2012

These stories have been published in WestWord, the magazine of the Writers' Guild of Alberta, with a limited distribution to members, mostly in Alberta. I retain copyright to these stories. These works may not be republished or shared online without consent.
Why Women Writers Must Fight 
for Equality... Again

Published in WestWord Dec 2012