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posted by [personal profile] owlfish at 10:01pm on 14/02/2012 under
Someone optimistically chirped at me, online, that more women than ever are involved in sf now!

I'm quite willing to believe that more women are *visibly* involved in aspects, especially higher-status aspects, of sf than before, where "sf" includes not only authors, but also editors, publishers, translators, illustrators, critics, reviewers, scholars, convention organizers, magazine editors and authors, and fans, among others.

But I'm reflexively hesitant to believe we now necessarily live in the best of all possible worlds moment when the most women are involved in "sf" in one way or another, the implicit result of progressivist developments.

Even if the early decades may look initially unpromising (but how involved were their partners/wives/daughters?), how was the wider community doing in the '90s? The '80s? The '70s?
There are 2 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 
posted by [identity profile] drasecretcampus.livejournal.com at 11:03pm on 14/02/2012
Depends how you define sf... I don't think in Britain there are a huge number of active sf novelists, say, at the moment.
 
posted by [identity profile] del-c.livejournal.com at 04:20pm on 15/02/2012
There's only one cure for battling impressions, and that's actual data. But how would we get information about (number of women involved in sf)/(number of men and women involved in sf)? Is there a convenient proxy measure that all parties would agree to?

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