Wednesday, February 11, 2015

there are women here today

A followup to my post tracking the percentage of women receiving Hugo nominations for fiction.

I had noted that, following low numbers in the decade of the 2000s, the numbers shot up in 2010, and went above 50% in 2011-13, with a still-high 39% in 2010 and 2014.

In conversation, Deb Notkin suggested that the rise may have been due to Racefail, which Geek Feminism Wiki defines as "a lengthy and varied discussion about race in Science Fiction Fandom that began in early 2009."

The date is important. Racefail made minorities, and women, more aware that they could have a voice in genre-defining matters like Hugo nominations - and more desirous of doing it - by joining Worldcons, even as supporting members, and casting ballots.

Did they increase their participation in significant numbers? Well, somebody did. The Hugo Awards site gives the number of nomination ballots in each category for 8 of the last ten years, and here's the numbers for the four fiction categories for those years, plus the total number of nominating ballots received, when available.

Novel Novella Novelet SS      Total
2005  424  249  215  271     546  
2006  430  243  207  278
2008  382  220  243  270     483
2009  639  337  373  448
2010                         864
2011  833  407  382  515    1006
2012  958  473  506  611    1101
2013 1113  587  616  662    1343
2014 1595  847  728  865    1923
See the steady rise in every category since 2009? There's power in numbers. Part of that increase is due to the decision to allow members of the previous and next worldcons to nominate, but I don't know when that took effect.

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