Thanks E. Shaun for clarifying that. You'd be surprised how often men's language implies stereotypes about women's roles and responsibilites, although I don't generally comment about ""Chairman" for a woman, as that seems different. Maybe I should. You'd be surprised too how almost without exception, there is an implication that the domestic is the women's territory which the man helps with. I've yet to see a household where a woman didn't do the lion's share of this, even these days and among women who resent it deeply. But I shouldn't have assumed this about you, so sorry!
To return to a matter which must be of equal important to men as well as women, I'm posting below a brief excerpt from Introduction to Women's Work which lists figures for major anthologies in UK. The US ones, slightly better, more consistently attain the 1/3 glass ceiling. As I also say there, but don't have room here these figures themselves reflect figures for publishers and those for editors speak for themselves.
I could also post a recent letter to UK Poetry Review quoting some pretty appalling figures there and quote too about as editor I feel I was unwillingly politicised in editing to book to correct omissions of an implicit status quo and how, apart from this Intro, the book is assembled on quality, as always, and so no doubt will be of equal interest to those unfamiliar with major poets either side of the ocean, including men, whose must be as interesting in erading women, as woman are reading men, surely. (Although acclaimed by many already, the book will not be reviewed in the TLS, who say to me openly they do not review women's anthologies.) It is impossible to distill how many issues discussed on some of these listserves are dealt with fully in this Introduction, but as it is an important gathering of poets, doubtless poets here would be as interested in it as any other anthology, whatever their/your sex! :
"Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse ed. Kenneth Allott – 5 women/90 men; New Penguin Book of English Verse ed. Paul Keegan – 16 women/81 men; British Poetry Since 1945 ed. Edward Lucie-Smith - 7 women/90 men; Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse ed. D.J. Enright – 3 women/37 men; 101 Sonnets ed. Don Paterson – 13 women/87 men (this book seemingly culled from Phillis Levin’s superb Penguin Book of the Sonnet ); The New Poetry ed. Al Alvarez – 2 women/26 men; Poetry 1900-1965 ed. George Macbeth – 2 women/21 men; New York Poets ed. Mark Ford – no women; New York Poets II eds. Mark Ford & Trevor Winkfield – 2 women/9 men; The Forward Anthology of Poetry for the years 1993-2006 consistently features many more men than women; critical books are similarly lop-sided. Ad nauseam. I could bore us all to kingdom come.
The anthologies The Firebox ed. Sean O’Brien (34 women/91 men), Emergency Kit eds. Jo Shapcott & Matthew Sweeney (41 women/116 men) and The Anthology of 20th c. British and Irish Poetry ed. Keith Tuma (31 women/87 men), with the fairer acknowledgements these figures imply, nevertheless hit the proverbial glass ceiling, with women poets comprising roughly 1/3 of the total, occasionally a smidgeon more; turning hopefully to Andrew Duncan’s Poetry Review article on this last volume, we find that his 30 regretted omissions - poets from the 1950’s-1990’s - include not a single woman. The anthologies Last Words eds. Don Paterson & Jo Shapcott (33 women/55 men) and The New Poetry eds. David Kennedy, David Morley & Michael Hulse (17 women/38 men) all have a “healthier” balance...."
|