Gender, democracy, and SFF literary awards

Polina Levontin and I wrote about gender, democracy, and SFF literary awards (the Hugos, the BSFA Awards, my own Sputnik experiment, plus a cameo by the Clarke Awards) for Foundation (thank you Paul March-Russell). Join up here and/or email me if you'd like a copy.

Here's an abstract:

This article explores cultural and design dimensions of non-governmental voting systems, focusing on science fiction and fantasy (SFF) literary awards voted for by fans, via three case studies: the Hugo Awards, the British Science Fiction Awards, and the Sputnik Award. The design of such voting systems needs to juggle a range of goals, one of which is fairness with regard to gender — acknowledging that ‘fairness’ is not straightforward to define, particularly given such awards are embedded within broader gender inequalities. Our analysis on the available data suggests that men have been more likely than women to vote for works by men, and also more likely to vote in ways that amplify the influence of men’s votes under an Alternative Vote System. We suggest that SFF awards are cultural spaces which lend themselves to experimentation with new democratic forms, and briefly offer potential sources of inspiration. Just as SFF has aspired to be a space to think about the future of technology, gender, the environment, and many other issues, SFF award spaces could be spaces for thinking about the future of democracy. We also offer recommendations to SFF awards designers and communities to address gender bias (emphasising reflective practices over technical solutions), and to continue to explore how aesthetic and cultural values and identities are constructed and negotiated within SFF award spaces, and beyond. 

And some diagrams (though I think these were very slightly updated in the published version)!

And here's a snippet:

Preferences are not the only gendered aspect of voting for literary awards. For example, we discovered that men tend to rank more options on the ballot. This offers some weak evidence suggesting that men are more likely to vote for novels they have not read. The 2020 Award featured a particularly long shortlist, and men were 80% more likely than women to rank more than six nominees. The 2020 Awards shortlist was announced on 18 February, with voting beginning shortly thereafter and closing on 3 April. More votes per person for male voters might also reflect gendered differences in reading habits throughout the year, if men read more and more varied-in-style science fiction than women (see e.g. Atkinson (2016) for an exploration of gender and class aspects of reading taste in the UK). However, extremely low-ranked preferences (the 7th-10th places) are unlikely to exert influence on the outcomes. 

Men’s tendency to vote for more authors per voter amplifies statistical differences in correlations between female and male voters. If men are more likely to vote for books they have not read, this would make their choices less reflective of their true taste, explaining why their preferences appear less correlated than women’s. However, more omnivorous reading could also have a similar statistical effect. Both explanations could be true simultaneously: within this voting community, men may be more likely to vote for books they have not read, and may read more widely (hence voting for more of the books they have read). 

Footnote: 

It is important to emphasise that the gendered reading dynamics within BSFA voters, drawn largely from the British public, may not be representative of the gendered reading dynamics of the British public as a whole. A higher percentage of women read daily than men do, and a lower percentage of women never read compared to men.