The pilot study “The Lack of Visibility of Female Authors in the Media. Results of a Quantitative Survey” is the first result of the long-term research project #countingwomen of the cross-association AG DIVERSITÄT of literature business.
In the aftermath of the „Round Table Discussion on the Role of Women in Culture and Media“ which was convened by the Minister of State for Culture and Media, experts who had participated in it, planned and realised the project #countingwomen in order to continue the survey independently.
With this and further studies the project #countingwomen aims at a compilation of data reports on the visibility of female authors in literature reviews, in the awarding of literary prizes, in publishing programmes, in teaching materials in schools, in juries or in awarding scholarships.
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The pilot study “The Lack of Visibility of Female Authors in the Media. Results of a Quantitative Survey” is the first result of the long-term research project #countingwomen of the cross-association AG DIVERSITÄT of literature business.
In the aftermath of the „Round Table Discussion on the Role of Women in Culture and Media“ which was convened by the Minister of State for Culture and Media, experts who had participated in it, planned and realised the project #countingwomen in order to continue the survey independently. With this and further studies the project #countingwomen aims at a compilation of data reports on the visibility of female authors in literature reviews, in the awarding of literary prizes, in publishing programmes, in teaching materials in schools, in juries or in awarding scholarships.
The continued analyses shall detect structural problems, their causes, and effects; furthermore they shall contribute to the development of constructive proposals in order to enhance gender equality in literature business. The present study “The Lack of Visibility of Female Authors in the Media. Results of a Quantitative Survey” has been conceived and carried out as pilot study in cooperation with the department for media research at University Rostock. In March 2018, 45 volunteers encoded 2036 reviews from 69 German media formats (print, radio, TV) and analysed them statistically according to certain parameters.
The lead questions were: Are there detectable differences between the media presence, frequency and scope of reviews of female authors and male authors? Do specific features exist, which can be traced back to the reviewer’s gender? Which genres are reviewed to which extent and by whom? Are therein significances ascertainable regarding the gender distribution (of reviewers and of authors)?
Choice of Media and Data Basis
The evaluation period for the research project was March 2018 on occasion of the Leipzig Book Fair 2018. From 1.3. to 31.3.18 all literary reviews, inserts, discussions or mentions of books were analysed in a specific choice of 69 sources of media.
The analysis of daily newspapers, weekly and monthly papers, television and radio broadcasts was set in a way that the portrayal of German journalism would be as representative as possible. Thus all national daily newspapers (SZ, FAZ, taz, Welt, Frankfurter Rundschau, Neues Deutschland etc.) were analysed and several local newspapers with diverse news agencies in the background (Tagesspiegel, Stuttgarter Zeitung, Magdeburger Volksstime, Ostseezeitung, Rheinische Post amongst others) were evaluated exemplarily. The media sample included furthermore a range of weekly newspapers and magazines like DER SPIEGEL, Die ZEIT, Der Stern, FAS, Der Freitag, Welt am Sonntag. Moreover, a great number of radio programmes – mainly public broadcasting – were analysed (SWR2 Lesenswert Feature, DLF Kultur, Radio Eins Die Literaturagenten, Bayern 2 Diwan amongst others). Additionally television programmes like 3Sat Buchzeit were examined.
A Team of 38 male and female encoders evaluated the data under the guidance of Janet Clark and Nina George. The complete list of evaluated data is enclosed at the end of this report. In the course of the research project, the following data have been collected: gender of the author, literary genre of the reviewed work, gender of the critic, length of the review in characters respectively seconds and whether the reviewed work is an original or licensed edition.
For more convenience of distinction, we use the term critic to speak of the creator of the review. By author we mean those who have written the reviewed books.
Amount of Reviews and Works
In total 2036 book reviews were encoded (appendix: Table 1). About two thirds of the evaluated critiques were published in print (64%, 1285 in total), ensued by radio reviews (28%, 561 in total) and reviews on TV (9%, 180). In the following the quantity will be abbreviated with “n”.
Thus most of the book reviews were released in daily newspapers, national newspapers and on the radio (appendix: Table 2; total view over the analysed sources of media is attached).
In total 1185 books were reviewed. The majority of these is written by individual authors instead of teams of authors. The survey included 52 (3%) teams of mixed gender, 26 (1%) all female teams as well as 60 (3%) all male teams. For better readability, female authors and all female author teams are consolidated just like male authors and all male author teams are. The teams of mixed gender are not taken into further consideration due to the rare number of cases.
A list of the 20 most reviewed books is enclosed in the end (chapter 7).
The book reviews had an average extent of 3066 characters in print, 490 seconds on the radio and 800 seconds on TV. The volume of the individual reviews present great disparities. It ranges from short reviews with about 150 characters to extensive reviews with about 17,000 characters in weekly newspapers. Also the length of radio reports varies between one-hour features and brief mentions of 20 seconds. For comparability’s sake of seconds and characters, radio and TV broadcastings were converted into characters: one spoken second corresponds to 13.75 characters in print.