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readallthenewberys2013-03-24 09:46 am
justice_turtle) wrote in readallthenewberys2013-03-24 09:46 am
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Gender statistics and the Newberys
I got curious about the number of male versus female writers on the Newbery list, and did a little number-crunching. OM NOM STATISTICS. Well, not actually statistics in a mathematical sense, I don't think (I have not very much math training), but there are percentages and ratios under the cut. ^_^
Notes about figures: Since the Newbery deliberations are shrouded in deepest secrecy, the only figures I have to work with are the officially released ones. In order to avoid long clumsy constructions, I say "nominee" when I mean "Newbery Medalist or Honor Book awardee, i.e. anyone on the list for the relevant year", and "man" or "woman" when I mean "male-authored book" or "female-authored book". I have made no adjustments for the fact that many people have had more than one Newbery Medal or Honor Book award; in fact, in the case of writers who had two awards the same year, I count them twice within that year.
* From 1922 through 1929, no woman won the Newbery Medal. During four of those eight years (50%), no woman was even nominated; in three more, there were more women than men on the slate, and in each of those cases I think one of the women wrote a better book than the male winner's. [The Dream Coach versus Tales from Silver Lands; Millions of Cats versus The Trumpeter of Krakow; and The Wonder Smith and His Son versus Gay-Neck, although that last is pretty debatable.] Of 23 Newbery nominees during that decade, 10 were women (43%) and 13 were men (57%).
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1920s were 0:10 female and 10:13 male; that is, 77% of men who were nominated won, while no women who were nominated won.
* From 1930 through 1939, no man won the Newbery Medal. During four of those ten years (40%), no man was even nominated. Of 63 nominees during that decade, 53 were women (84%) and 10 were men (16%).
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1930s were 10:53 female and 0:10 male - that is, 19% of women who were nominated won, while no men did.
* I happen to know that in 1939 Howard Pease, in a speech to the ALA, decried the mostly female control of the kidlit field. I'm going to blame him directly for the way the next set of statistics runs. ;P (I love his YA writing dearly, but good grief, man. Sit down and shut up.)
* From 1940 to 1949, the winners are evenly split - 50% male, 50% female - although of 50 nominees, only 12 were male (24%), and in three years no men were nominated. In three other years, a man beat out a full slate of women; in only two years (1947 and 1949) did a woman win over any male nominees. Those winners were Miss Hickory by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey and King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry.
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1940s were 5:38 female and 5:12 male; that is, 42% of men who were nominated won, while only 13% of women who were nominated did so.
* The 1950s stats are hard to compute because there are both m/f writing teams and authors who took two Newbery Honor commendations the same year. However, counting one author with two books as "two" and counting a male-female writing team as "one", .5 male/.5 female -- from 1950 to 1959, 7 women and 3 men won the Newbery Medal. Of 52 nominees, 33 (plus half a writing team) were female (64%), and 18 (plus the other half) were male (36%).
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1950s were 7:33.5 female and 3:18.5 male, thus 21% of women who were nominated won and 16% of men who were nominated did so - the first time the genders come anywhere near parity and the first time (of many) that a larger proportion of female than male nominees won. In two separate years no men were nominated, but in the other five a woman beat at least one man, and in 1959 (for the first time in Newbery history) this even happened "against the odds", i.e. while there were fewer women than men on the slate. That winner was Elizabeth George Speare with The Witch of Blackbird Pond.
* In 1968, E.L. Konigsburg became the first woman to have two Newbery listings in the same year. (Meindert deJong was the first man to achieve this, in 1954.) Like deJong, Konigsburg eventually got a third book on the Newbery list; unlike deJong, whose third book came out the very next year, Konigsburg waited twenty years for her third listing.
* From 1960 to 1969, 7 women and 3 men again won the Newbery Medal. Of 38 nominees, 19 were male and 19 (counting Konigsburg's double) were female; for the first time, the number of books by male and female authors came out exactly equal. Two of the three male winners won in years no women were nominated, and all except one of the women beat out one or more men for the title.
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1960s are 7:19 female and 3:19 male - 37% of women who were nominated won, while 16% of men did so.
* From 1970 to 1979, 2 men and 8 women won the Newbery Medal. There were 36 nominees, 9 male (25%) and 27 female (75%). In 1970 a man, William H. Armstrong with Sounder, beat a slate of three women for the medal, and the other male win in the decade came in the only year more than one man was nominated - 1972, when Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH defeated another male nominee and four women (including Ursula K. LeGuin with The Tombs of Atuan) for the medal. Two of the eight female medalists won in years when no man was on the slate.
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1970s were 8:27 female (30%) and 2:9 male (22%).
* From 1980 to 1989, 7 women and 3 men again won the Newbery Medal. There were again 36 nominees, of whom 11 were male (31%) and 25 female (69%). In two years near the beginning of the '80s no men were nominated, while all three male winners are clumped right at the end of the '80s. In 1980, for the first time in Newbery history, a single female nominee (Joan W. Blos with A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal, 1830-1832) beat the male competition - although there was also only one man on the ballot in that year, David Kherdian with The Road from Home: The Story of an Armenian Girl. Not until 1992 would a lone woman (Phyllis Reynolds Naylor with dog story Shiloh) beat out more than one man for the Newbery Medal.
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1980s were 7:25 female (28% of women nominated won) and 3:11 male (27% of men nominated won). We have a decade with almost exact parity! ^_^
* From 1990 to 1999, 8 women and 2 men won the Newbery Medal. 36 authors were again nominated, 14 of them male (39%) and 22 female (61%). In both years that men won, no women - and only two men - were nominated; in two other years ('95 and '97), only women were nominated, and in 1997 notably, the slate consisted of FIVE women and no men.
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1990s were 8:22 female - i.e., 36% of women on the ballot won - and 2:14 male, i.e. only 14%.
* From 2000 to 2009, 4 men and 6 women won the Newbery Medal - the biggest proportion of male winners since the 1940s. There were 43 total nominees, 14 male (33%) and 29 female (67%). In two years, 2002 and 2007, no men were nominated; women won two of the decade's three two-on-two faceoffs, and in 2004 a lone female nominee beat an all-male slate of competitors (still only two men) for the third time in Newbery history. On the other hand, three out of four male wins were against numerically superior opposition, and in 2009 we have our last example (so far) of one man - Neil Gaiman with The Graveyard Book - defeating a full slate of female competitors.
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 2000s were 6:22 female - 27% of women nominated for the medal won - and 4:14 male, 29%. For the first time since the 1940s, a larger proportion of nominated males than of nominated females took the medal, though the numbers are still close to parity.
* The last four years for which we have numbers at this writing, 2010 through 2013, feature three female winners (75%) and one male winner (25%). There are seventeen nominees, 5 male (29%) and 12 female (71%). Wins go reliably "by the odds" to the gender with more nominees on the slate. At least one woman has been nominated in all four years, while 2011 saw five women and no men nominated.
* The winner-nominee ratios for these last four years are 3:12 female (25% of women nominated have won) and 1:5 male (20% of men nominated have won).
* Overall, 31 men and 61 women have won the Newbery Medal. 124 men (plus half a male/female writing team) have been nominated, as have 267 women (plus the other half of the writing team), for a total of 392 nominees, 32% of whom were male and 68% of whom were female. In 19 separate years no men have been nominated; in 8 separate years, only men have been nominated. 42 women have defeated male nominees for the medal while only 23 men have defeated women.
However, among eighteen separate years when nominees won "against the odds", i.e. when the winner's gender had fewer nominees on the slate than the other gender did, fifteen of those winners were men - an overwhelming 83% - while only three were women. In other words, 65% of male nominees who defeated female ones did so "against the odds", while only seven percent of female winners who beat male competition did it "against the odds".
* The winner-nominee ratios overall are 61:267.5 female (23% of female nominees won) and 31:124.5 male (25% of male nominees won). Granted the modern custom of having no more than five Honor Books per year, it would still take only two successive years in which a lone female nominee beat out a packed slate of five male nominees to make these two percentages equal after rounding... but how likely is that to happen? :S
Feel free to discuss, critique, rework, graph-ify, or draw conclusions from my numbers! Conversation is awesome! But since I'm posting this publicly and it can be kind of a fraught topic, I will remind any would-be trolls who may happen by that I am the mod and I wield the banhammer. BOOM. ;-)
Notes about figures: Since the Newbery deliberations are shrouded in deepest secrecy, the only figures I have to work with are the officially released ones. In order to avoid long clumsy constructions, I say "nominee" when I mean "Newbery Medalist or Honor Book awardee, i.e. anyone on the list for the relevant year", and "man" or "woman" when I mean "male-authored book" or "female-authored book". I have made no adjustments for the fact that many people have had more than one Newbery Medal or Honor Book award; in fact, in the case of writers who had two awards the same year, I count them twice within that year.
* From 1922 through 1929, no woman won the Newbery Medal. During four of those eight years (50%), no woman was even nominated; in three more, there were more women than men on the slate, and in each of those cases I think one of the women wrote a better book than the male winner's. [The Dream Coach versus Tales from Silver Lands; Millions of Cats versus The Trumpeter of Krakow; and The Wonder Smith and His Son versus Gay-Neck, although that last is pretty debatable.] Of 23 Newbery nominees during that decade, 10 were women (43%) and 13 were men (57%).
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1920s were 0:10 female and 10:13 male; that is, 77% of men who were nominated won, while no women who were nominated won.
* From 1930 through 1939, no man won the Newbery Medal. During four of those ten years (40%), no man was even nominated. Of 63 nominees during that decade, 53 were women (84%) and 10 were men (16%).
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1930s were 10:53 female and 0:10 male - that is, 19% of women who were nominated won, while no men did.
* I happen to know that in 1939 Howard Pease, in a speech to the ALA, decried the mostly female control of the kidlit field. I'm going to blame him directly for the way the next set of statistics runs. ;P (I love his YA writing dearly, but good grief, man. Sit down and shut up.)
* From 1940 to 1949, the winners are evenly split - 50% male, 50% female - although of 50 nominees, only 12 were male (24%), and in three years no men were nominated. In three other years, a man beat out a full slate of women; in only two years (1947 and 1949) did a woman win over any male nominees. Those winners were Miss Hickory by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey and King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry.
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1940s were 5:38 female and 5:12 male; that is, 42% of men who were nominated won, while only 13% of women who were nominated did so.
* The 1950s stats are hard to compute because there are both m/f writing teams and authors who took two Newbery Honor commendations the same year. However, counting one author with two books as "two" and counting a male-female writing team as "one", .5 male/.5 female -- from 1950 to 1959, 7 women and 3 men won the Newbery Medal. Of 52 nominees, 33 (plus half a writing team) were female (64%), and 18 (plus the other half) were male (36%).
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1950s were 7:33.5 female and 3:18.5 male, thus 21% of women who were nominated won and 16% of men who were nominated did so - the first time the genders come anywhere near parity and the first time (of many) that a larger proportion of female than male nominees won. In two separate years no men were nominated, but in the other five a woman beat at least one man, and in 1959 (for the first time in Newbery history) this even happened "against the odds", i.e. while there were fewer women than men on the slate. That winner was Elizabeth George Speare with The Witch of Blackbird Pond.
* In 1968, E.L. Konigsburg became the first woman to have two Newbery listings in the same year. (Meindert deJong was the first man to achieve this, in 1954.) Like deJong, Konigsburg eventually got a third book on the Newbery list; unlike deJong, whose third book came out the very next year, Konigsburg waited twenty years for her third listing.
* From 1960 to 1969, 7 women and 3 men again won the Newbery Medal. Of 38 nominees, 19 were male and 19 (counting Konigsburg's double) were female; for the first time, the number of books by male and female authors came out exactly equal. Two of the three male winners won in years no women were nominated, and all except one of the women beat out one or more men for the title.
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1960s are 7:19 female and 3:19 male - 37% of women who were nominated won, while 16% of men did so.
* From 1970 to 1979, 2 men and 8 women won the Newbery Medal. There were 36 nominees, 9 male (25%) and 27 female (75%). In 1970 a man, William H. Armstrong with Sounder, beat a slate of three women for the medal, and the other male win in the decade came in the only year more than one man was nominated - 1972, when Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH defeated another male nominee and four women (including Ursula K. LeGuin with The Tombs of Atuan) for the medal. Two of the eight female medalists won in years when no man was on the slate.
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1970s were 8:27 female (30%) and 2:9 male (22%).
* From 1980 to 1989, 7 women and 3 men again won the Newbery Medal. There were again 36 nominees, of whom 11 were male (31%) and 25 female (69%). In two years near the beginning of the '80s no men were nominated, while all three male winners are clumped right at the end of the '80s. In 1980, for the first time in Newbery history, a single female nominee (Joan W. Blos with A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal, 1830-1832) beat the male competition - although there was also only one man on the ballot in that year, David Kherdian with The Road from Home: The Story of an Armenian Girl. Not until 1992 would a lone woman (Phyllis Reynolds Naylor with dog story Shiloh) beat out more than one man for the Newbery Medal.
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1980s were 7:25 female (28% of women nominated won) and 3:11 male (27% of men nominated won). We have a decade with almost exact parity! ^_^
* From 1990 to 1999, 8 women and 2 men won the Newbery Medal. 36 authors were again nominated, 14 of them male (39%) and 22 female (61%). In both years that men won, no women - and only two men - were nominated; in two other years ('95 and '97), only women were nominated, and in 1997 notably, the slate consisted of FIVE women and no men.
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 1990s were 8:22 female - i.e., 36% of women on the ballot won - and 2:14 male, i.e. only 14%.
* From 2000 to 2009, 4 men and 6 women won the Newbery Medal - the biggest proportion of male winners since the 1940s. There were 43 total nominees, 14 male (33%) and 29 female (67%). In two years, 2002 and 2007, no men were nominated; women won two of the decade's three two-on-two faceoffs, and in 2004 a lone female nominee beat an all-male slate of competitors (still only two men) for the third time in Newbery history. On the other hand, three out of four male wins were against numerically superior opposition, and in 2009 we have our last example (so far) of one man - Neil Gaiman with The Graveyard Book - defeating a full slate of female competitors.
* The ratios of winners to nominees in the 2000s were 6:22 female - 27% of women nominated for the medal won - and 4:14 male, 29%. For the first time since the 1940s, a larger proportion of nominated males than of nominated females took the medal, though the numbers are still close to parity.
* The last four years for which we have numbers at this writing, 2010 through 2013, feature three female winners (75%) and one male winner (25%). There are seventeen nominees, 5 male (29%) and 12 female (71%). Wins go reliably "by the odds" to the gender with more nominees on the slate. At least one woman has been nominated in all four years, while 2011 saw five women and no men nominated.
* The winner-nominee ratios for these last four years are 3:12 female (25% of women nominated have won) and 1:5 male (20% of men nominated have won).
* Overall, 31 men and 61 women have won the Newbery Medal. 124 men (plus half a male/female writing team) have been nominated, as have 267 women (plus the other half of the writing team), for a total of 392 nominees, 32% of whom were male and 68% of whom were female. In 19 separate years no men have been nominated; in 8 separate years, only men have been nominated. 42 women have defeated male nominees for the medal while only 23 men have defeated women.
However, among eighteen separate years when nominees won "against the odds", i.e. when the winner's gender had fewer nominees on the slate than the other gender did, fifteen of those winners were men - an overwhelming 83% - while only three were women. In other words, 65% of male nominees who defeated female ones did so "against the odds", while only seven percent of female winners who beat male competition did it "against the odds".
* The winner-nominee ratios overall are 61:267.5 female (23% of female nominees won) and 31:124.5 male (25% of male nominees won). Granted the modern custom of having no more than five Honor Books per year, it would still take only two successive years in which a lone female nominee beat out a packed slate of five male nominees to make these two percentages equal after rounding... but how likely is that to happen? :S
Feel free to discuss, critique, rework, graph-ify, or draw conclusions from my numbers! Conversation is awesome! But since I'm posting this publicly and it can be kind of a fraught topic, I will remind any would-be trolls who may happen by that I am the mod and I wield the banhammer. BOOM. ;-)