Part three of my 2020 reading review, which goes back to that fateful day years ago when a serious analysis of my own reading list revealed the consequences of choosing books without intention. For new readers, the short version is that I discovered certain implicit biases in terms of how I picked out reading material based on the author's gender.
If the concept still isn't clear to you, get up to speed with this TOA rewind.
Hello ladies - 2020 update
My 2020 breakdown, which shows that revelation and acceptance do not suffice when the goal is correcting implicit biases:
- Male authors - 28 books
- Female authors - 18 books
Of course, data analysis doesn't really begin until the disaggregation, and there are a couple of breakdowns I've kept my eye on over the past couple of years. One is the role of rereading:
- Male authors - 28 books
- 9 books reread
- Female authors - 18 books
- 3 books reread
I don't have a huge insight into this subset of the data, but I will acknowledge one possibility - over the course of my lifetime I've read more books by male authors, which means the total number of possible rereads is skewed toward male authors. I don't think this fact is having a significant influence over my decisions, but on the other hand "I don't think" is the unofficial slogan of implicit bias.
The second subset I like to check is gifts and recommendations, which I've made a practice of reading ASAP:
- Male authors - 28 books
- 5 books recommended or gifted
- Female authors - 18 books
- 2 books recommended or gifted
This stat always has the feel of the "annual excuse exercise" but I think it's important to work through the subset in order to understand the truth about the underlying data. The original "Hello Ladies" post grew out of some research about the disparity in the way publishers marketed books written by female authors, so it's no surprise whenever the gifts and recommendations tip toward being 60%-70% male - most people read less than I do, which leads me to suspect that most people are more reliant on traditional marketing sources to find out about books. The solution for my reading, though, isn't to point fingers - I chose a male author almost 60% of the time. What I see in this data set is the importance of keeping a close eye on the metrics in my control, which in this case is the 23/16 split, and using that information to make the right adjustments. Not much is clear even now about 2020, but I can say for sure that I didn't meet my high standard in this particular regard, perhaps by assessing my choices against the benchmarks of good intentions rather than good results. I am confident that keeping a closer eye on this metric in 2021 will be an important first step to a more balanced reading list.
