Based on comments made by others to my previous post, I thought I’d dig a little deeper… which means more fun with Excel! (I apologise in advance to anyone on LJ as the charts don’t seem to come out, but feel free to check them out on my WordPress blog).
Novel
From 2003 to 2008 Best Novel was dominated by men. But the last few years has actually seen this category move to near parity with an overall 54% to 46% split in favour of the men. (This is why you need to look at more than one year when discussing issues of gender parity).
Novella
Apparently there was no novella award in 2003. The split here is 64% to 36% in favour of men. Without the last three years that split widens even further to 76% compared to 24%.
Short Story
In complete contrast to the Novella category, the Short Fiction category has always been female-friendly (in terms of nominations and awards). The split is 63% to 37% in favour of women.
Overall – 2003 to 2009
This is how the Ditmar Awards were looking before the 2010 ballot was announced – with the Short Fiction category easily featuring the most female nominations.
Overall (the full 10 years)
A remarkable change. The last three years brings us so close to actual parity (dictionary definition and all). The raw numbers are 84 nomination to men to 80 nominations to woman.
Hope that helps.
Yeah I did a rough count on your last set of graphs and came up with the same end result.
Be interesting to see how that compares with the Aurealis Awards – whether a panel judged award exacerbates or evens out the trends.