Julia Duin: Women Too Often invisible in the Evangelical World

Posted by Kendall Harmon

Fifty percent of the evangelical Christian world is hidden. They're known as women.

Not long ago, I was paging through a list of "top 40" nonfiction authors in World magazine, an evangelical weekly. Thirty-eight of the authors were men; two were women.

I e-mailed an editor, asking about the gender imbalance. He said an upcoming list of fiction authors would include more female names.

What about female authors who write nonfiction, I asked. He took a look at the unsolicited books in his office. Of the 33 sent over the transom, only three were written by women.

I doubt the ratio of evangelical male to female writers is 10 to 1. What I suspect is that these women's publishers are less apt to push their books.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Religion & Culture • Women • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

5 Comments
Posted November 23, 2009 at 5:01 pm [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. Brian from T19 wrote:

Well, they seem to be happy with this understanding of gender roles, so why complain?

November 23, 6:06 pm | [comment link]
2. Archer_of_the_Forest wrote:

So who exactly is being blamed here? As I read the clip, it appears to be the fault of publishers not the Evangelical powers that be. Am I reading that right?

November 23, 6:19 pm | [comment link]
3. newcollegegrad wrote:

(1) 50 percent may be hidden with respect to public metrics like best sellers lists, but that does not entail that women are hidden simpliciter. In churches and in families, evangelical women are not hidden. They are very active in ministry and prayer. Females are indispensable to the working theology of evangelical churches. (2) If the standard is who is writing books, then you could use the same statistics to argue that over 99% of the evangelical populace is hidden. Why assume that male authors accurately represent the male, evangelical church-going cohort? Has Julia Duin heard of my father who lives in a city of 100,000 people? If not, does this represent a case of morally blameworthy discrimination? (3) Praise music is at least as important a metric respecting evangelical thought as books, and women are better represented in this respect. (3) Book sales should need to be corrected for how many people buy books but never read them. This phenomena applies to evangelical books just as much as it applies to secular writings.

November 23, 8:28 pm | [comment link]
4. Monksgate wrote:

Another factor missing from this very short piece is the question of quality rather than quantity.  For instance, what is the critical assessment of the books published.  Is it possible that a high percentage of the male-authored books are not highly regarded by peers and a high percentage of female-authored books are?

November 24, 3:53 am | [comment link]
5. evan miller wrote:

More gender politics.  Get over it.  I couldn’t care less whether the author of a work is male, female, or a baboon.  It’s the content I’m interested in.  I strongly suspect publishers are no different.

November 24, 11:05 am | [comment link]
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