CCBC-Net Archives
RE: Caldecott and Diversity - Question 4: Gender
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: Colleen Kelley <cakelley_at_ix.netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 20:02:55 -0400 (EDT)
body{font-family: Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:9pt;ba ckground-color: #ffffff;color: black;}
For what it's worth, my own experience with children's book writers has been that many have begun writing children's books while raising their children at home and after reading many books to their children. Others ar e former or current grade school teachers, a field dominated by women. In 2011, a statewide SCBWI conference I attended had 94% female atten dees, and in 2012, 95% were female. This includes middle grade and young ad ult writers as well as writers for younger children's books. Editors, autho rs, art and marketing directors, and agents who presented at these eve nts were also mostly women, with 8 females and 3 males presenting in 2011, and 5 females and 1 male presenting in 2012. Colleen Kelley
-----Original Message----- From: Charles Bayless
Sent: May 17, 2013 9:55 AM To: "'ccbc-net, Subscribers of'" Subject: RE:
Caldecott and Diversit y - Question 4: Gender
Zhtml xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40" xmlns:m="http://schemas.m icrosoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:offi ce:word" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:v="urn
/* Font Definitions */ _at_font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} a:ZZZlink, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-priority:99; color:blue; text-decoration:underline;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-priority:99; color:purple; text-decoration:underline;} span.EmailStyle17 {mso-style-type:personal-compose; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:windowtext;} span.EmailStyle18 {mso-style-type:personal; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; font-size:10.0pt;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}
Kathleen Horning has ad ded a question regarding gender of winners. Again, from my current pr oject, I have data that throws some light on this.
Question 4: Why a re the Caldecotts dominated by male illustrators and is it different if you include honor mentions?
You know my drill в Ђ“ quantify.
No, it doesn’t make a difference to distinguish Medal Winners versus Honors. Males h ave won 69% of the Medals and 67% of the Honors.
Interestingly, this pat tern is not different from other awards or from bestsellership.
Percentage of authors t hat are male by prize (and omitting dual authorship):
Pulitzer - 61%
PW Fiction Bestsellers – 61% PW Nonfiction Bestselle rs – 86% Book of the Month Club Selections – 63% Critically Acclaimed – 86% Caldecott – 69%
Newberry – 34%
Coretta Scott King в Ђ“ 57%
The odd one out in this pattern is the Newbery with 66% of winners being female. So Caldecot t is not out of line with other awards or other forms of public choice (bes tsellers). Looking at the norm among prizes, there are really two dif ferent questions.
Question 4a: Why is there a pattern among prizes and popularity with the general public such that males are represented in the range of 60-85% among winners and most p opular? Question 4b: Why is this pattern different for the Newberry?
Question 4a: Why is there a pattern among prizes and popularity with the general public such that males are represented in the range of 60-85% among winners and most p opular?
I suspect we are dealin g with a social and economic artifact here arising from the way people orga nize their lives and priorities.
The disparity in perfor mance (with low female representation at the highest levels of achievement) is not limited to book awards but shows up repeatedly in other fields of e ndeavor such as: Pulitzer Journalism Award (14%), Senior Corporate Ex ecutives (16% female), Members of the House of Representatives (16%), US Se nators (14%), law firm partners (16%), accounting firm partners (18%), surg eons (19%), Engineering/STEM degrees (21%), full professors (23%, ="http://chronicle.com/article/The-Pyramid-Problem/126614/" target=_bla http://chronicle.com/article/The-Pyramid-Problem/126614/ ), published authors (30%, ublishing/ ), average of literary prizes (35%), etc. In fields whe re there would likely be virtually no attention paid to gender, this 15-30% representation appears. For example, among the most frequently linke d online articles, only 20% are by women. There seems to be something fundamental here.
The issue of female wor kforce attrition has been extensively studied by major corporations over th e past three decades. Companies tend to hire equally in proportion to supply but experience much higher attrition among their female employees t han their male employees. This represents a major cost (a lot of inve stment in human capital walks out the door before the benefits accrue from those investments) and companies have a high incentive to solve that proble m. The attrition disparity is traceable to family status rather than gender. Single males and single females demonstrate comparable attrit ion rates, compensation increases, promotion rates etc.
Simplistically, female attrition in the corporate environments is primarily driven by conflicts be tween family obligations and work commitments, particularly in terms of hou rs to be worked and flexibility to address unanticipated issues. The consequence of these conflicts is that the male/female ratio in most fields starts out relatively even and then begins to pyramid, sometimes slowly in less competitive fields, usually steeply in demanding fields. Within five years, the equal ratio has morphed to 2:1 and by ten years to 3:1.&nb sp; These root causes have been known for thirty years and there are plenty of innovative solutions that have been developed to help address the issue . None-the-less, the pattern remains and the solutions, while good fo r particular individuals, have not made much of a difference to the overall numbers.
The reason this attriti on is relevant is related to the role that experience and practice plays in achieved excellence. The two relevant variables are volume of hours of experience/practice and the duration/continuity of practice. Top a chievers in every field are virtually always distinguished by the exception ally high number of focused hours of experience and the duration of that ex perience. It is relatively rare for someone to appear at the top of t he league without these attributes. In athletics, chess, classical mu sic performance, and other easily quantifiable fields, there is a strong pr edictive correlation between number of hours spent training/practicing, con tinuity of training and level of achieved outcome. Talent and passion are a prerequisite but volume and continuity are the variables with the la rgest impact on outcomes regardless of gender.
If volume and continuit y are the primary determinants of outcome (given basic competence), then wh at we need to determine is the split between genders of those that are able to focus full-time on careers over long durations. We can measure vo lume of full-time work by gender pretty easily. The split in full-tim e year round workers is 58% male and 42% female ( http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat08.htm ). This is a floor as it constitutes only those who work 35 hours a week or more. Ideally we would want to see the ratios at graduated l evels: 40 hours a week, 50, 60, 70, 80. There are virtually no top performers in any field that only spend 35 hours on their craft/career. So even though this is a low threshold, it is the data we have and w hat the data says is that if volume of effort is correlated with outcome, s traight off the bat, you would expect that 58% of top prizes would go to ma les.
The detailed measuremen t of continuity is much more difficult. Despite that, it is well rese arched and documented that there is a marked drop-off in full-time female l abor force participation around childbearing years. This is particula rly topical at the moment owing to Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In. In that book, she indicates that 43% of women in careers exit the la bor force for family reasons with only 40% of those returning full-time at some point in the future. Recognizing that this is entirely a back-of -the-envelope calculation, these two figures indicate that women only repre sent some 29% of the pool of full-time workers who do not have a planned in terruption in their career (0.42X0.43 18%; 42-18 24% of women who w ork full-time and do not interrupt careers; 58+24 82 number of full-tim e and continuous workers; 24/82 29% of full-time and continuous workfor ce who are women). All of this assumes that non-planned, non-family r elated career interruptions oc cur at the same incidence rate between the se xes.
It might be a coinciden ce that the percentage of female full-time continuous labor force participa tion of 29% is within the observed range of 15-30% of top level achievement ; it could be, but I suspect not.
The premise is that int ense effort as measured by volume of hours and continuity of effort is pred ictive of significant achievement. The rough data indicate that the p roportion of full-time workers without planned career interruptions is appr oximately 61% male and 29% female. The forecast is that even at this very basic analytical level, not taking into account other variables that a re known to affect achievement, that one would expect major achievements in most fields at a ratio of roughly 2:1 male to female. The conclusion is that indeed, observed outcomes across multiple fields of endeavor are i n rough proportion to that of full-time continuous workers.
It probably warrants re peating what I have said in the past: 1) this is a good faith effort to work within the constraints of the data that we have, 2) that better qua lity data or more complete data might change the conclusions, and 3) that a verages are not individuals, there are always exceptions.
If this line of logic a nd evidence holds up, the implication is that if we are to achieve changes in the representation rates at the highest levels of achievement, it is pri marily an issue of changing individual life decisions regarding family and careers.
Question 4b: Why is this pattern different for the Newberry?
I have no data to answe r this one. One might argue, as others do regarding Caldecott, that t here is some form of unconscious bias or systemic discrimination, in this c ase against males versus females. I am highly skeptical of both propo sitions.
Instead of seeking to e xplain the outcome as a function of bias and discrimination, my speculation follows from the above discussion. Perhaps the invested hours in mot herhood and particularly the direct care and nurturing of children, serves in some fashion as a form of intense practice. That is to say that th e number of hours spent with children provide, perhaps, some form of insigh t into the language and cognitive development and concerns of children whic h is a beneficial competency in terms of writing for children. That w ould be consistent with the argument and the data but it seems just a littl e too pat. This could be a valid supposition but I don’t set great store by it yet simply because the nature of authorship, authorial su ccess, book consequence, etc. are such murky processes.
One testable prediction that would arise if the supposition is true is that the average age of fem ale winners of the Newberry ought to be 5-15 years older than the average o f male winners.
A second testable predi ction arising from this hypothesis is that the percentage of female winners of the Newbery who are mothers ought to be higher than female winners in o ther fields of endeavor such as corporate executives, partners in law firms , etc.
Both these predictions are easily determinable. Just needs someone with the time to gather t hat data. Perhaps a class project?
Charles
Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 20:02:55 -0400 (EDT)
body{font-family: Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:9pt;ba ckground-color: #ffffff;color: black;}
For what it's worth, my own experience with children's book writers has been that many have begun writing children's books while raising their children at home and after reading many books to their children. Others ar e former or current grade school teachers, a field dominated by women. In 2011, a statewide SCBWI conference I attended had 94% female atten dees, and in 2012, 95% were female. This includes middle grade and young ad ult writers as well as writers for younger children's books. Editors, autho rs, art and marketing directors, and agents who presented at these eve nts were also mostly women, with 8 females and 3 males presenting in 2011, and 5 females and 1 male presenting in 2012. Colleen Kelley
-----Original Message----- From: Charles Bayless
Sent: May 17, 2013 9:55 AM To: "'ccbc-net, Subscribers of'" Subject: RE:
Caldecott and Diversit y - Question 4: Gender
Zhtml xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40" xmlns:m="http://schemas.m icrosoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:offi ce:word" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:v="urn
/* Font Definitions */ _at_font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} a:ZZZlink, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-priority:99; color:blue; text-decoration:underline;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-priority:99; color:purple; text-decoration:underline;} span.EmailStyle17 {mso-style-type:personal-compose; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:windowtext;} span.EmailStyle18 {mso-style-type:personal; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:#1F497D;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; font-size:10.0pt;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}
Kathleen Horning has ad ded a question regarding gender of winners. Again, from my current pr oject, I have data that throws some light on this.
Question 4: Why a re the Caldecotts dominated by male illustrators and is it different if you include honor mentions?
You know my drill в Ђ“ quantify.
No, it doesn’t make a difference to distinguish Medal Winners versus Honors. Males h ave won 69% of the Medals and 67% of the Honors.
Interestingly, this pat tern is not different from other awards or from bestsellership.
Percentage of authors t hat are male by prize (and omitting dual authorship):
Pulitzer - 61%
PW Fiction Bestsellers – 61% PW Nonfiction Bestselle rs – 86% Book of the Month Club Selections – 63% Critically Acclaimed – 86% Caldecott – 69%
Newberry – 34%
Coretta Scott King в Ђ“ 57%
The odd one out in this pattern is the Newbery with 66% of winners being female. So Caldecot t is not out of line with other awards or other forms of public choice (bes tsellers). Looking at the norm among prizes, there are really two dif ferent questions.
Question 4a: Why is there a pattern among prizes and popularity with the general public such that males are represented in the range of 60-85% among winners and most p opular? Question 4b: Why is this pattern different for the Newberry?
Question 4a: Why is there a pattern among prizes and popularity with the general public such that males are represented in the range of 60-85% among winners and most p opular?
I suspect we are dealin g with a social and economic artifact here arising from the way people orga nize their lives and priorities.
The disparity in perfor mance (with low female representation at the highest levels of achievement) is not limited to book awards but shows up repeatedly in other fields of e ndeavor such as: Pulitzer Journalism Award (14%), Senior Corporate Ex ecutives (16% female), Members of the House of Representatives (16%), US Se nators (14%), law firm partners (16%), accounting firm partners (18%), surg eons (19%), Engineering/STEM degrees (21%), full professors (23%, ="http://chronicle.com/article/The-Pyramid-Problem/126614/" target=_bla http://chronicle.com/article/The-Pyramid-Problem/126614/ ), published authors (30%, ublishing/ ), average of literary prizes (35%), etc. In fields whe re there would likely be virtually no attention paid to gender, this 15-30% representation appears. For example, among the most frequently linke d online articles, only 20% are by women. There seems to be something fundamental here.
The issue of female wor kforce attrition has been extensively studied by major corporations over th e past three decades. Companies tend to hire equally in proportion to supply but experience much higher attrition among their female employees t han their male employees. This represents a major cost (a lot of inve stment in human capital walks out the door before the benefits accrue from those investments) and companies have a high incentive to solve that proble m. The attrition disparity is traceable to family status rather than gender. Single males and single females demonstrate comparable attrit ion rates, compensation increases, promotion rates etc.
Simplistically, female attrition in the corporate environments is primarily driven by conflicts be tween family obligations and work commitments, particularly in terms of hou rs to be worked and flexibility to address unanticipated issues. The consequence of these conflicts is that the male/female ratio in most fields starts out relatively even and then begins to pyramid, sometimes slowly in less competitive fields, usually steeply in demanding fields. Within five years, the equal ratio has morphed to 2:1 and by ten years to 3:1.&nb sp; These root causes have been known for thirty years and there are plenty of innovative solutions that have been developed to help address the issue . None-the-less, the pattern remains and the solutions, while good fo r particular individuals, have not made much of a difference to the overall numbers.
The reason this attriti on is relevant is related to the role that experience and practice plays in achieved excellence. The two relevant variables are volume of hours of experience/practice and the duration/continuity of practice. Top a chievers in every field are virtually always distinguished by the exception ally high number of focused hours of experience and the duration of that ex perience. It is relatively rare for someone to appear at the top of t he league without these attributes. In athletics, chess, classical mu sic performance, and other easily quantifiable fields, there is a strong pr edictive correlation between number of hours spent training/practicing, con tinuity of training and level of achieved outcome. Talent and passion are a prerequisite but volume and continuity are the variables with the la rgest impact on outcomes regardless of gender.
If volume and continuit y are the primary determinants of outcome (given basic competence), then wh at we need to determine is the split between genders of those that are able to focus full-time on careers over long durations. We can measure vo lume of full-time work by gender pretty easily. The split in full-tim e year round workers is 58% male and 42% female ( http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat08.htm ). This is a floor as it constitutes only those who work 35 hours a week or more. Ideally we would want to see the ratios at graduated l evels: 40 hours a week, 50, 60, 70, 80. There are virtually no top performers in any field that only spend 35 hours on their craft/career. So even though this is a low threshold, it is the data we have and w hat the data says is that if volume of effort is correlated with outcome, s traight off the bat, you would expect that 58% of top prizes would go to ma les.
The detailed measuremen t of continuity is much more difficult. Despite that, it is well rese arched and documented that there is a marked drop-off in full-time female l abor force participation around childbearing years. This is particula rly topical at the moment owing to Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In. In that book, she indicates that 43% of women in careers exit the la bor force for family reasons with only 40% of those returning full-time at some point in the future. Recognizing that this is entirely a back-of -the-envelope calculation, these two figures indicate that women only repre sent some 29% of the pool of full-time workers who do not have a planned in terruption in their career (0.42X0.43 18%; 42-18 24% of women who w ork full-time and do not interrupt careers; 58+24 82 number of full-tim e and continuous workers; 24/82 29% of full-time and continuous workfor ce who are women). All of this assumes that non-planned, non-family r elated career interruptions oc cur at the same incidence rate between the se xes.
It might be a coinciden ce that the percentage of female full-time continuous labor force participa tion of 29% is within the observed range of 15-30% of top level achievement ; it could be, but I suspect not.
The premise is that int ense effort as measured by volume of hours and continuity of effort is pred ictive of significant achievement. The rough data indicate that the p roportion of full-time workers without planned career interruptions is appr oximately 61% male and 29% female. The forecast is that even at this very basic analytical level, not taking into account other variables that a re known to affect achievement, that one would expect major achievements in most fields at a ratio of roughly 2:1 male to female. The conclusion is that indeed, observed outcomes across multiple fields of endeavor are i n rough proportion to that of full-time continuous workers.
It probably warrants re peating what I have said in the past: 1) this is a good faith effort to work within the constraints of the data that we have, 2) that better qua lity data or more complete data might change the conclusions, and 3) that a verages are not individuals, there are always exceptions.
If this line of logic a nd evidence holds up, the implication is that if we are to achieve changes in the representation rates at the highest levels of achievement, it is pri marily an issue of changing individual life decisions regarding family and careers.
Question 4b: Why is this pattern different for the Newberry?
I have no data to answe r this one. One might argue, as others do regarding Caldecott, that t here is some form of unconscious bias or systemic discrimination, in this c ase against males versus females. I am highly skeptical of both propo sitions.
Instead of seeking to e xplain the outcome as a function of bias and discrimination, my speculation follows from the above discussion. Perhaps the invested hours in mot herhood and particularly the direct care and nurturing of children, serves in some fashion as a form of intense practice. That is to say that th e number of hours spent with children provide, perhaps, some form of insigh t into the language and cognitive development and concerns of children whic h is a beneficial competency in terms of writing for children. That w ould be consistent with the argument and the data but it seems just a littl e too pat. This could be a valid supposition but I don’t set great store by it yet simply because the nature of authorship, authorial su ccess, book consequence, etc. are such murky processes.
One testable prediction that would arise if the supposition is true is that the average age of fem ale winners of the Newberry ought to be 5-15 years older than the average o f male winners.
A second testable predi ction arising from this hypothesis is that the percentage of female winners of the Newbery who are mothers ought to be higher than female winners in o ther fields of endeavor such as corporate executives, partners in law firms , etc.
Both these predictions are easily determinable. Just needs someone with the time to gather t hat data. Perhaps a class project?
Charles
---Received on Fri 17 May 2013 08:02:55 PM CDT
