Gender bias in speculative fiction?
Susan Urbanek Linville's article "SF & Fantasy in the New Millennium: Women Publishing Short Fiction," published in the Winter 2002 issue of the SFWA Bulletin, created as much of a stir in some circles as Judith Berman's article "Science Fiction Without the Future" had in 2001.
Sue's article sparked a panel at WisCon, and another one upcoming at WorldCon, but most of the people I've talked with about it haven't seen the original article. Fortunately, SFWA has now posted the article to their site; follow the above link to read it.
Sue asked us for information relating to SH for the article, and I've been kicking myself ever since for dropping the ball and not giving that info to her, because (to put it in selfish terms) our stats make us look pretty good by comparison to the Big Four print prozines; or (to put it in less selfish terms) our stats both agree with some of the other data she provides (in that our percentage of female submitters is more or less in line with the 40% number that everyone always bandies about), and suggests that there may be something else going on (in that our percentage of published stories by women is significantly higher than any of the others, which suggests all sorts of further questions to ask).
At any rate, I think it's a fascinating and important topic, and I'm grateful to Sue for presenting it so clearly and well. (And for presenting it in as neutral a way as possible, which I hope lets people read the data and come to their own conclusions, rather than attacking anyone for exhibiting bias.) And to Mark Kreighbaum, the new Bulletin editor, for publishing the article, though I don't know whether he or his predecessor Dave Truesdale originally bought it.
I'll bring a copy of the article to the panel at WorldCon, along with the accompanying graphs if possible. (The URLs are currently a little messed up, but I'm hoping that'll be fixed soon.) (The article may also be a little hard to read online, 'cause it's set at a fixed width that's significantly wider than most browser windows; I'm hoping that'll be fixed soon too. In the meantime, you can print it out and it'll look fine, though in Safari you'll need to increase the font size by about three sizes before it's readable on a printed page.)
Discussion welcome, of course. And of course you can find further food for thought at the Broad Universe statistics page, notably in the various sections for the Year's Best anthologies.