[Maryann Corbett]

If we really want to know, there were 24 poems submitted by women (or at least their names look like women's names).

A few more statistics about our running imbalance, which I e-mailed to Janice earlier today, and which I gathered with the admin console's tools back last September:

Of the 166 different members who posted at some time in the past month, only 51 were women. Of posters in the previous week, 32 of 93 were women. Of 261 members with a last-activity date in the past month, 70 were women.

I can't tell you what it means, but there it is.

[Roger Slater]

Sounds like the typical party I got invited to in college.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Well, the fact that men dominate at the two Metrical sites doesn't surprise me and probably not anyone else either. Boys talk most and loudest in the classroom, yadda, yadda.

I don't think that a rundown of the Met/TDE statistics necessarily is an indicator, because bake-offs often attract even members who don't post every seven days. I remember bakeoffs where both Wendy and Maz had marvelous work (and were among the "winners") and at the time we didn't see their participation with items for workshopping. Many members have passed the "need" for workshopping, they are in control of their craft and many then drop out.

Others continue to post routinely and I think in many cases they do so to keep the forums lively and to support the newbies (highly commendable). You can't crit all the time without putting your money where your mouth is and giving the others a chance to have a go at your stuff.

To take another Wendy-Maz-type example, Jan D. (and I am a big fan of his work as well) doesn't post so often, he too knows what he is doing with his craft, but he was a "winner" here. Based on these three high-profile indicators , I am guessing that every bake-off has a considerable number of entries from experienced members who aren't necessarily active on a day-to-day basis. And in that category are many gals.

I never really thought about the gender distribution in our other bakeoffs, but it was so striking in this case when all six "winners" were male. I'll put a few doughnuts on there having been submissions from many of our very talented women members—not all of whom post except occasionally.

I repeat, this is in no way a slandering of Wendy (god forbid, I'm her #1 fan) or her choices from the blind material. It is just an idle thought which I perhaps should have left idling.

I wonder too why so few women post at TDE, and it may be that the entries to the bakeoff were equally skewed. I am not begrudging you, heck, I voted for you.

PS. I know very little about poker but have played a few times and almost always won.

Crossposted with Maryann:
PS again. Thanks, Maryann, about a third in other words. Next question is why fewer women post. I have a few ideas, but no facts.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Janice - for me, it's not so much why I don't post poems on TDE, but why I DO post them, sometimes, on Met.

Because it's delightful there!

And I need my poetry with delight! Poetry is difficult and delightful.

And there's a delight at Met that draws the moth-me. I can't explain where it comes from, or why it should be, but I feel it, nonetheless.

Cally

[Michael Cantor]

I believe the question is why men appear to dominate the metrical sites, Cally, not which metrical site is warmer and fuzzier and serves its poetry with delight. (And if the snarkiness of my answer provides a possible answer, so be it.) Both Deep End and Met are overwhelmingly male.

Out of curiosity, I checked a relatively high level site that is primarily aimed at non-Met, and ranges from langpo to plodding lineated essays - the Gaz. First 50 posts were 33/17 M/F. (The infrequently used Metrical Board was something like 10/2 M/F, but a lot of the M was Ed Conti.) So the pattern is possibly not as strong in FV (as we see on the Sphere as well), but it's strong in both cases.

[Tim Murphy]

I've run or advisedly run the mother of all bake-offs, the sonnet, for years. The women have pretty well swept the top slots. This is a silly conversation.

[Janice D. Soderling]

With respect, Tim, I don't think it is silly at all.

A goal of all our forums is to encourage participation from underrepresented groups, in this case, female. Why? Because this gives diversity and helps keep the forums from being boring. A poem about knitting needles, if it is well-crafted and has some depth, can be quite as compelling as a poem about a hunting dog or growing grain. (Note, I am NOT disparaging poems about either subject. Best to make that clear.)

I am not calling for representation at the expense of quality, of course. Quality has precedence over quantity, but I acknowledge that poor quality poems sometimes appear at all the forums. It is to be expected that they appear but not that they garner unwarranted praise.

Thanks, Michael, for taking the time to pull up statistics.

[Roger Slater]

But Janice, how come you're not equally eager to get to the bottom of why women tend to sweep the sonnet competitions, which is even more extraordinary when you consider the male-dominated membership roster? If your goal is diversity, the lack of men winning the sonnet competitions should concern you as well, yet, when the women won, everyone, as I recall, was delighted and almost seemed to celebrate the women's triumph. Perhaps that was a bit condescending. But it's no more diverse when women take all the prizes than when men do ... unless you start with the assumption that the deck is so stacked against women that an absence of men is merely a chance event, while an absence of women is business as usual.

[Tim Murphy]

Congratulations to all contenders, and warm thanks to Maryann and Wendy. We had quite a serious conversation on women and their place in the present and past of poetry at our Women's Forum. Autumn 08 on this board? If I recall rightly, women have won six of eight sonnet bakeoffs.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Bob, If you're looking for trouble, you came to the wrong place.

Someone, not I, might like to check the figures to see if it is true that women "sweep" the sonnet bake-offs. I don't off-hand recall if we have had a bakeoff or a succession of bakeoffs where the ten chosen sonnets were by women, I don't think so, but I haven't investigated.

I remember a lot of fine sonnets by men, esp. one where the entire sonnet was a single sentence. I remember a lot of fine sonnets by women as well. Lots of fine craftspeople hang out here.

Crossposted with Tim.