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) in an article published by 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.

 

 

BSFA Awards Shortlist 2019

... is out!

I like literary awards for loads of reasons, one of which is that they raise similar questions to AI and automation: Can you design and implement a procedure that will reliably replicate human judgment? You run the program again and again, and sometimes it appears to work, and sometimes it's a bit dodgy, and sometimes it's so dodgy you consider tweaking the code. (See note). In fact, it's probably time we had literary awards judged by AI. I will fully get on that.

Also, I like the way they are a democracy cosplay.

Also, I like the way they make so many people incredibly grouchy.

Including me. Comparing longlist with shortlist, I'm personally a little disappointed not to see Sandra Newman's The Heavens and Tim Maughan's Infinite Detail up for Best Novel. Zen Cho would have been great too.

Other minor kvetches? Well, no shade to the brilliant work of the shortlisted artists, it feels a slight shame that the BSFA Award for Best Artwork has once again effectively become the BSFA Award for Best Cover, after a just slightly more varied selection last year. I pledged 50 superdelegates to Cedric Mizero's A New Life in the Village exhibition and 50 superduperdelegates to SinJin Li Studios' Productive Futures conference ephemera (notably an insanely gorgeous booklet, but also name badges sporting symbols later revealed to assign each conference-goer to a science fictional profession and class status: this was a conference with worldbuilding), but no dice.

One of the nice and slightly precarious things about the BSFA Awards specifically is that they don't boundary-police too much, but despite technically allowing any genre fiction authored anywhere in the world -- there is no hard design rule, for example, that prevents the British Science Fiction Association Awards from being completed flooded one year by US-authored epic fantasy -- they do keep a focus on what you might roughly flail your arms at and designate "British SF."  Still, in recent years Best Novel has included the likes of Yoon Ha Lee, Ann Leckie, Tricia Sullivan, Aliette de Bodard, and Nnedi Okorafor, and in Brexit year especially, it might have felt better to have a shortlist that wasn't so Very Very UK?

But like I say, these are nano-kvetches and overall -- looks like a seriously strong list! I've not read many of them or anything, but, you know, I Know the authors' Work. A bit of a mix of big publishers and smaller indie stuff is also a plus. I feel like BSFA Awards have a kind of Iowa and New Hampshire energy to them. Not bellweathers exactly, but at least an upward spurt of force that might propel something unusual into the swirling weather of the Nebulas and Hugos. Well done algorithm and the horde of human hearts that execute it.

The Non-Fiction category is a weird one, since it's so often comparing across different forms and modes. One big glitch: a piece I wrote for Big Echo, about Star Trek and work, slipped onto the Non-Fiction shortlist, among proper big books with squillions of hours of research and labour embedded in them.

Also maybe kind of interesting: the Shorter Fiction category is dominated by novellas. Why??? IS THE SHORT STORY DEAD???

Note: Except it's weird, because most of the circuitry this 'AI' is running on is actually made out of human judgments in the first place, only these are a different set of judgments from the set of judgments it's endeavouring to simulate. I.e. the judgment it is attempting to simulate is something like, "What is the best eligible book?" Whereas key judgments which actually operationalise the simulation include things like, "What system shall we use to tally up the votes? What stages shall we have? How shall we time things? Is this particular borderline work eligible in the first place?" And, "Shall I join the BSFA? Shall I vote? Shall I vote for this thing by my friend? Shall I vote for this thing I haven't read but which is by an author whose work I admire?" So related judgments, but different. Also, of course, not just judgments but also plenty of work, in particular the work of BSFA Award Administrator Clare Boothby.