{"id":593,"date":"2010-12-30T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-30T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbicmsblog.reedbusiness.com\/elogic_660000266\/?p=593"},"modified":"2010-12-30T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T11:00:00","slug":"newbery-caledecott-and-printz-by-the-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=593","title":{"rendered":"Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz by Gender"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"If there’s one thing writing this blog has shown me, it’s that I seem to enjoy collecting and aggregating and looking at lists of interesting and useful data. (I think it’s that whole illusion-of-order-in-a-chaotic-world impulse.)
\nTwo big projects I’ve done for ShelfTalker have been inordinately satisfying: the Starred Review round-up<\/a> I collect throughout each year (an updated, end-of-year, full 2010 list will be posted soon), and the continually updated World Full of Color library<\/a>, highlighting more than 630 books that are not race-focused but feature main characters of color.
\nMy most recent project has been the creation of an Excel spreadsheet of the Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz award and honor books and authors, including data on the gender of the authors. (I plan to do the same for the Coretta Scott King award and the Sibert award soon.) I would also have collected data on the ratios of Caucasian award winners to award winners of color, but that disproportion is not only depressingly obvious to even casual followers of these awards, but has been discussed in many other places.)
\nThis effort started when I noticed that, while women have historically outnumbered men in the children’s literature field, the Caldecott medals show a reverse ratio: 47 gold medals have gone to 43 men, while 20 medals have gone to 16 women. The medals are deserved and the books distinguished. But can it really be the case that male artists are more than three times as talented as female artists? Do male artists take more risks than female artists and are rewarded accordingly? Or are men’s creative efforts taken more seriously than women’s? Does our society unconsciously\/ subconsciously still value men’s work more than women’s? At conferences in even female-dominated fields, I notice that men are much more likely to be featured as keynote speakers and male panelists often outnumber female panelists 3:1 in the premiere sessions. The numbers made me curious.
\nSo then I ran the Newbery numbers, and the results are tipped in the opposite direction. The majority of gold medals have gone to women\u201459 have gone to 55 women, while 28 have gone to 27 men. Of the honors: 65 men have won 87 Newbery honors, whereas 147 women have won 197 Newbery honors.
\nI’m not a statistician, and the only way numbers like this can really mean anything is to have more data: for instance, to know the actual numbers of male and female children’s book authors and illustrators published during each year of these awards, and then look at the ratios again. Still, in a world whose population is roughly 50\/50 male and female, the discrepancies in these ratios says something about our field and its history, and I’m interesting in thinking about exactly what those somethings are.
\nAnyone have thoughts on the subject?
\nI’m going to do a summary by genre soon, too. Just need to track down a few more of the out-of-print books.
\nAs for this year’s January 10 awards: good luck to all of the authors and artists hardly even daring to secretly cross their fingers hoping for an early-morning phone call a week from Monday! I can’t wait to see your names in lights. And for those of you with secret hopes who don’t get that phone call, try to remember that your fine work will find its grateful audience even without the shiny sticker.
\nNote about the numbers below: I have tried to be as accurate as possible in my tallies, making my lists directly from the ALA website and sorting the results and counting the winners and honors several times. (It also took quite a while to track down the genders of several of the earlier authors. Thank goodness for the internet, is all I have to say.) So I think the numbers are pretty spot-on, but I am a mere human, with limited spreadsheet capabilities, so I’m happy to hear about any discrepancies from other listmakers out there.
\nCALDECOTT<\/strong>
\nOut of 72 Caldecott Gold Medals:<\/em>
\n<\/strong>47 have gone to 43 men
\n20 have gone to 16 women
\n5 have gone to 5 male\/female pairs (all unique illustrator pairs)
\nOut of 226 Caldecott Honors:<\/em>
\n<\/strong>138 have gone to 88 men
\n83 have gone to 53 women
\n5 have gone to 4 male\/female pairs
\nCaldecott combined summary, out of 298 medals total:<\/em>
\n<\/strong>191 have gone to 100 men (*note: some winners are also honor recipients)
\n102 have gone to 61 women (*ditto)
\n10 have gone to 6 male\/female pairs
\nNEWBERY<\/strong>
\nOut of 87 Newbery Gold Medals:<\/em><\/strong>
\n59 have gone to 55 women
\n28 have gone to 27 men
\nOut of 292 Newbery Honors:<\/em><\/strong>
\n197 have gone to 147 women
\n87 have gone to 65 men
\n5 have gone to 3 male-female co-author teams
\n1 has gone to a two-woman co-author team
\n1 has gone to a female author writing under a male pseudonym
\n1 has gone to a two-man co-author team
\nNewbery combined summary, out of 379 awards total:<\/em><\/strong>
\n256 have gone to 174 women (*note: some winners are also honor recipients)
\n115 have gone to 80 men (*ditto)
\n5 have gone to 3 male-female co-author teams
\n1 has gone to a two-woman co-author team
\n1 has gone to a female author writing under a male pseudonym
\n1 has gone to a two-man co-author team
\nPrintz Award<\/em><\/strong>
\nOut of 11 Printz Gold Medals:<\/strong><\/em>
\n6 have gone to six women
\n5 have gone to five men
\nOut of 41 Printz honors<\/strong><\/em>:
\n23 honor medals have gone to 22 women
\n17 honor medals have gone to 15 men
\n1 honor medal has gone to an anthology with poems by authors of both sexes (female editor)
\nPrintz combined summary, out of 52 awards total:
\n<\/strong><\/em> 29 medals have gone to 28 women
\n22 medals have gone to 20 men
\n1 medal has gone to an anthology with poems by authors of both sexes (female editor)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there’s one thing writing this blog has shown me, it’s that I seem to enjoy collecting and aggregating and looking at lists of interesting and useful data. (I think it’s that whole illusion-of-order-in-a-chaotic-world impulse.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}