But statistics showing the gender breakdown of books reviewed by some of Australia's major newspapers and literary magazines, highlight a striking imbalance in the coverage of male and female authors.
Along with these two variables, three student background variables were included: gender, number of books at home, and whether the language spoken at home was the language of the test.
For state publications, the Sunday Age in Victoria and the Canberra Times had the biggest gender disparity: 38% of books reviewed were by women.
Regressions control for gender, age, number of books at home, a migrant indicator, and country fixed effects.
— to think about the gender of who wrote a book — shouldn't it ideally be anyone?
Then lnleft( {frac{{P_{i} }}{{1 - P_{i} }}} right) = beta X_{i} + gamma Z_{i}where X i = vector of demographic characteristics (Age, Gender, ParEd, Book), Z i = vector of acquired characteristics (Cognitive Skills, Education Attainment), β and γ = vectors of fixed coefficients to be estimated.
The bestselling novelist Jennifer Weiner has long been a vocal critic of gender bias in book reviews, and in 2010 attacked the "sexist" New York Times, which she said loved "its literary darlings, who tend to be dudes w/MFAs".
An even more stark contrast occurred in the gender of the authors of the books reviewed.
The chairwoman of the Stella Prize, Aviva Tuffield, told Books+Publishing that the statistics show: "There is still work to be done to make literary editors and beyond more aware of their unconscious biases and to raise awareness of the disparity in the gender of the authors of the books they review".
The Stella Count also confines itself to looking at the gender of the authors of books reviewed, rather than mirroring the much wider VIDA count which also includes a breakdown of book reviewers themselves.
