Edmund Schubert, who is the editor of Orson Scott Card's online fantasy and science fiction magazine InterGalactic Medicine Show, calls a 2:1 publishing ratio of men to women "balanced." I'm sure Mr. Card agrees.
When one of Schubert's assistant editors brought to his attention a "kerfuffle" (code for: women are using their words to discuss the gender discrepencies in the publishing world) relating to science fiction and feminism, they decided it was a good idea to crunch the numbers and see how many women had published stories on IGMS under Schubert's editorship. Scubert sort-of jokingly admits that the assistant editor said he “was actually kind of worried that the exercise might reveal some sort of imbalance that might reflect unconscious bias on my part,”
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Going back to the beginning of 2008, IGMS has published (or bought and is waiting to publish) 93 stories total, 65 of which were written by men, 28 of which were written by women. Not a perfect 2:1 ratio, but close enough to satisfy me.
Out of a total count of 659 submissions, only 184 were written by women, while a staggering 411 were submitted by male authors. 64 authors submitted under gender-ambiguous names so can not be placed on either column.
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So male author submissions outnumber female author submissions almost 2:1. I was actually kind of worried that the exercise might reveal some sort of imbalance that might reflect unconscious bias on my part, but the numbers are remarkably balanced.”
Schubert qualifies these last statistics by pointing out that he has no control over who submits stories:
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I can’t control the number of submissions I get from any group or gender; I’m just saying we publish them at about the same ratio that we receive them.
But he doesn't notice anything funny about an industry that has twice as many men submitting stories for publishing than women. Why doesn't he think this is odd in any way? How can he consider it balanced?
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The funny thing (to me, anyway) is that I didn’t really need to see the numbers to know we had a good balance; I could tell by the reactions from readers.
I don't expect Schubert to have all the answers; he couldn't possibly know when fewer women submit to his publications. I would expect him to at least posit the question of why there are fewer women; I would expect him to notice that this is odd, and I would hope it would bother him. It doesn't.
I'd like to venture a guess: perhaps because his boss, Orson Scott Card, is a notorious homophobic, women are less likely to submit to his publication that to others. Homophobics tend to share the views of sexists - that heterosexuality and male supremacy are part of the "natural" order of things. As a woman, I'd never submit my short stories to any publication run by such a person. I'd like to compare these publishing ratios to those of other online and print science fiction and fantasy fiction publications and see how they add up: my guess is women don't want to show support for someone who has called gay people "anti-family" and says that the purpose of marriage is reproduction (gee, Mr. Card, I wonder how you feel about abortion rights?).
I somehow doubt he would be talking about how balanced things were if the ratio were reversed.