At one of my book clubs we realised that all of the books we had read to date were written by men (the group members are two thirds women, one third men, and we rotate who suggests the next book but agree collectivity). To start to address this, we chose The Authority Gap by Mary Ann Sieghart as the next book, which we’ll be discussing on 14th November.
The conversation we had about choosing books, together with reading The Authority Gap, got me thinking about what my listening and reading habits are – specifically how often women host the podcasts I listen to and write the books I read. So I thought I would take a look and do some analysis (because I love collating and analysing data) based on 2025 to date. It’s not something I’ve thought about before, because I don’t consciously take the author’s demographics into account when deciding what to read.
In this analysis, I’ve only considered gender and not other demographics such as ethnicity, sexuality, disability etc. (Intersectionality is a complex topic that I know little about) Gender is relatively easy to track, especially when I’m skimming the shelves in a bookshop, and a target is also easy to calculate. As far as I know, all the authors I’ve read this year identify as male or female.
Podcasts
These are the podcasts that I subscribe to:
- The Mutoid Podcast (sci-fi)
- Linux Matters (technology)
- The Rest is Politics (politics)
- The Rest is Politics: Leading (interviews, mostly but not exclusively with politicians)
- 2.5 Admins (technology)
- Hybrid Cloud Show (technology)
- The Bottom Line (business)
None of them have a permanent female presenter at the time of writing. The Rest is Politics hosts have interviewed a lot of women, and The Bottom Line usually avoids an all-male panel.
I did listen to The Rest is Politics US, but I unsubscribed because I felt that the male presenter kept talking over the female presenter (when I expressed this view on Reddit there was a mix of opinions). Politics Weekly from the Guardian also had a female presenter, but I cut back my politics podcasts to the bare minimum because I found the state of affairs too depressing.
The challenges I found when considering a more representative gender balance were as follows.
Host demographics: I did some digging for statistics on podcasts, and the general indication seemed to be that podcast listeners are almost perfectly balanced in gender, but podcast hosts are not—hence the joke: ‘What do you call a group of white men? A podcast.’
Subject matter: Technology podcasts seem to be extremely male-dominated, politics and business a bit less so (but still not balanced).
No change of hosts: I can gradually introduce books by women into my ‘to read’ shelf, without losing out on books that I enjoy by men, and I can alternate what I read. However, with podcasts the hosts don’t change episode to episode, so if I want a podcast hosted by women I have to drop one of the ones I currently listen to.
I think the requirement to drop one of my existing podcasts – all of which I enjoy – is the hardest barrier to overcome.
Books
My initial thought was that female authors are definitely under-represented in my non-fiction reading. As with podcasts, part of this is down to the area I work in – it is rare that I come across a computer science textbook with a female author for example.
However, in fiction I guessed that there would more of a gender balance, because there have been some really good fantasy series by women in the last few years – I enjoyed Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas for example, and will probably read her other series. I’ve also enjoyed every Kate Mosse book I’ve read so far, although all but one were in previous years so aren’t included in this analysis. Trudi Canavan writes some excellent fantasy as well, and has been around for a long time.
Guesses and thoughts are not facts and data though, so I created an SQLite database with all the books and authors I’d read this year, together with some basic information such as whether the book was fiction or non-fiction, the author’s gender, and how I decided to read the book (e.g. it was chosen for one of the book clubs I’m a member of).
My overall stats of books finished so far in 2025 are:
- 71 books in total
- 75 unique authors – some books had multiple authors, but I also read multiple books by the same authors
- 43 books where I was the sole decision maker, i.e. it wasn’t for a book club (where we decide collectively) or for work (insurance and statistics)
The most frequently read author by number of books was Sarah J. Maas (4 books from The Throne of Glass series, which I finished this year), followed by Jeremy Clarkson (3 books from the Diddly Squat series). However, SJM is well ahead by length, as her books are usually 700+ pages, whereas Clarkson only knocks out about 250 pages per book. All of their books were my personal choices. The only other author appearing more than once was Stephen King, with The Mist (film club – I wanted to compare the film to the book) and The Gunslinger (recommendation from a friend).
The overall split of authors was 21 women to 54 men. If I consider books based on the gender of the majority of the authors I get:
- 48 books by men (67.6%)
- 22 books by women (31.0%)
- 1 book by equal numbers of male and female authors (1.4%)
If I only include books where I was the sole decision maker:
- 31 by men (72.1%)
- 11 by women (25.6%)
- 1 equal (2.3%)
So I am slightly more biased towards men when I make the decision alone.
How about fiction vs non-fiction – were my initial thoughts correct?
- Fiction total: 27
- Men: 13
- Women: 14
As close to a perfect balance as you can get with an odd number of books. The percentages are similar for books where I made the decision – an even number of books led to a perfect balance.
So I guess non-fiction must be where the imbalance lies:
- Non-fiction total: 44
- Men: 35 (79.5%)
- Women: 8 (18.2%)
- Equal: 1 (2.3%)
The breakdown is the same for books where I made the decision (33 books with 6 by women – 18.2%). I read more non-fiction than fiction though, which is why the overall stats favour male authors.
Questions that I can’t currently answer, but which might be interesting:
- Scoring of books by author gender, e.g. do I give higher scores to books by men or women?
- Gender breakdown by number of pages – I’ve read some long books by women (especially Sarah J. Maas), so my fiction reading might actually skew more towards female authors.
- Has the gender breakdown changed over time?
I will probably update my database with page count, score etc. at the end of the year to see if there is anything interesting to say and if the balance has changed. The breakdown over a longer period would also be interesting, but would require a lot of data entry to import the 614 books I’ve read between 2017 and 2024.
How to address the imbalance?
For books, I have been experimenting with only buying non-fiction books with at least one female author, when the purchase is for me and I’m the sole decision maker (i.e. not including book clubs where I have to buy whatever book the group has selected, work-related books, or presents for other people). I think that should help gradually address the imbalance, as those books percolate to the top of my to-read pile. However, it’s been difficult so far, as scanning the shelves of my local bookstore I estimate that perhaps 10-20% of the non-fiction books in my areas of interest (primarily politics, business, history, and technology) are by women.
So far I have bought:
- A Little History of Psychology by Nicky Hayes
- Limitarianism by Ingrid Robeyns
- The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato
- Code Dependent by Madhumita Murgia
- Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
- The Gendered Brain by Gina Rippon
I’ve read Invisible Women and The Gendered Brain a few years ago, but the others are all from authors who are completely new to me. I also made the mistake of reading the GoodReads comments for these two books, something I will not be repeating.