A few posts back (June 21) I wrote about VIDA’s findings of sexual discrepancies in literary publishing.  In the July/August issue of Poets and Writers Magazine, I read about a blog by poet Anna Leahy, “Submission Mission,”  in response to the idea that women writers don’t get published as much as their male counterparts because they don’t submit as often.   “Submission Mission,” hosted by the social networking site She Writes, presents submission prompts, ideas for where to submit work (http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/where-to-submit), a monthly chat session and an exchange of ideas around the subject of getting your work out there.  You can read Leahy’s blog at http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/the-submission-mission-a-1.  If you want to post comments and participate in the chats, you have to sign up, but it’s free and easy to become a member of She Writes.  And you don’t have to be female.   She writes is a great resource for writers, with lots of groups and support.  It’s definitely worth checking out: http://www.shewrites.com/page/about-1.

The comments posted at “Submission Mission” are interesting…expanding the discussion beyond the “women don’t submit as often” argument to talk about things like women’s fear of/taking rejection too hard, getting tired of beating one’s head against the publishing wall, economic discrepancies that hinder women, and who the people who are doing the selecting at magazines and publishing houses.  Here’s one thoughtful follow-up:   http://beyondthemargins.com/2011/02/submitting-work-a-womans-problem/  Be sure and read the comments too.

And Ruth Franklin (a senior editor at The New Republic,) wrote a fascinating piece in response to the VIDA statistics: http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/82930/VIDA-women-writers-magazines-book-reviews

She and two other women at TNR conducted a small sample of books published last year to see if more men than women had books published (they did not include genre books or ones with primarily commercial appeal).  Here’s what they found:

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Soaking in a hot bath (backache from too many downward dogs in yoga), the day after my birthday (spent, romantically, with not one but two men: the AC repairman who came to fix the AC that wouldn’t come on after a sudden, awful 90 degree day in the Twin Cities; and “A.J.”, a darling dude at the Verizon Store who helped me with my new “smart phone” and who, after erasing everything on it and rebooting it, said, “Oh. All you needed was to have this mobile data icon turned on.” If you are over forty and need taking down a few pegs, I recommend an Android.)…

Anyway, soaking in a hot bath, I was disheartened to read in PAW (the Princeton Alumni magazine–my husband’s) about a report released in March regarding the underrepresentation of women among Princeton’s highest-profile undergraduate leadership positions and as recipients of the highest academic prizes.  You can read the full report or a summary at http://www.princeton.edu/reports/2011/leadership/download/  or read a discussion of the issue at http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailybeast/20110321/ts_dailybeast/13002_whyprincetonswomentakesecondplaceoncampus_1

PAW followed up on this report with two personal essays in the May 11 issue, one by Christine Stansell ’71, a scholar of women’s history at the University of Chicago who spent many years on the Princeton Faculty; and the other by senior Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, ’11 (GO AMELIA!), who shares this year’s Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize, Princeton’s highest undergraduate academic honor.

Having been away from academia (thank god) for a number of years now, I had not thought about how women might be faring there these days.  So it was with a great sinking feeling that I read that women still have a lot of the same problems I had as an undergraduate, graduate student and faculty member.   It’s not really overt sexual discrimination.  We actually have come a long way on that one.  But according to the report, among other things, women consistently undersell themselves and sometimes make self-deprecating remarks in situations where men might stress their own accomplishments; in many situations, men tend to speak up more quickly than women, to raise their hands and express their thoughts even before they are fully formulated; women, more than men, are pressured to behave in certain socially acceptable ways, or, as one woman in the report said, to be “pretty, sexy, thin, and friendly” and to make it look as if they weren’t really trying so hard, that achievements came naturally to them.  On the plus side, women outpace men on campus in academic achievements, except at the very highest levels.  But men are more likely to be awarded major Princeton prizes and to win prestigious postgraduate fellowships.

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