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This starts out with some feel good, happy carefree plots but be prepared for the sobering finish.

Looking at the gender breakdown of the Aurealis winners and shortlists over time.

Aurealis SF Novel category:

Here is the breakdown by gender of the SF novel category for the history of the award:
Aurealis SF novel Shortlists
And here is the corresponding breakdown by gender of the SF Novel category winners for the history of the award:

Aurealis SF novel winners

But what of the shortlists? Here is the breakdown by gender for the shortlists for the SF novel category for the history of the award, by year:

Aurealis SF Novel shortlists column

What I feel I still need to chase down here, if the information can be found, is what was eligible for consideration for the shortlists for each of these years to have a look at that gender breakdown.

But here’s some fun facts for this category. Over the course of this category award, there have been 19 wins to 13 individuals: 4 women and 9 men. The 4 women are Marianne de Pierres, Kim Westwood, Maxine McArthur and Kate Orman and they each won this award once. 5 men have won this award more than once: K A Bedford (2), Damien Broderick (3), Sean Williams (2), Sean McMullen (2) and Greg Egan (2 – though he declined the second).

Aurealis Fantasy Novel category:

Shortlists by gender:
Aurealis Fantasy Novel shortlists

 

And the winners:
Aurealis Fantasy winners
And shortlists broken down by year for comparison:

Aurealis Fantasy Novel Shortlists column

 

Aurealis Horror Novel Category:

Shortlists by gender:

 

Aurealis horror novel shortlists

And the winners:
Aurealis Horror Novel winners
And shortlists broken down by year for comparison:
Aurealis Horror shortlists column

And YA Novel Category:

Shortlists by gender:
Aurealis YA shortlists
And the winners:

 

Aurealis YA Novel shortlists
And shortlists broken down by year for comparison:
Aurealis YA shortlists column

 

And finally, I thought it would be interesting to compare the above with the Ditmar novel category.

The Ditmars have been running a lot longer than the Aurealis Awards, are a popular vote by the attendees at Natcon and there is only one novel category:
Ditmar Novel Winners
Now, this is a pretty shocking pie chart. I think it presents case in point, Tansy’s Theory that as soon as you ask people to narrow their choice down to one, you [mostly] get a male winner. That 15% female winners, equates to 7 compared to 39 male winners: Cherry Wilder in 1978, Lucy Sussex in 1997, K J Bishop in 2004  and then Margo Lanagan (2009), Kaaron Warren (2010), Tansy Rayner Roberts (2011) and Kim Westwood (2012).

Or more importantly, here is where they sit chronologically:
Ditmar novel winners column

I need to do a proper comparison, but it feels like in most years, the SF novel beats out the Fantasy or YA to win the Ditmar. The other thing of note, is that the fantasy Aurealis category has some strong female novelists who appear multiple years on the shortlists and often have won several. These include Juliet Marillier, Sara Douglass, Glenda Larke, Marianne de Pierres, Isobelle Carmody.

I think these two awards gender breakdowns are interesting to compare to awards I already looked at, namely the lifetime achievement awards:
Chandler
Peter Mac WinnersPeter Mc Convenors

All these awards represent narrowing the winner choice down to one person. The most interesting here is the Peter McNamara Convenors’ award, given the novel category gender breakdowns above.



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7 Comments

  • By Paul Weimer (@princejvstin) on 11 April 2013 at 8:53 pm

    Thanks, Alisa

    Enlightening but sobering.

  • By Tansy Rayner Roberts on 11 April 2013 at 9:00 pm

    If we’re making it official, I believe Tansy’s theory should have a ‘mostly’ added to it – would be churlish of me to suggest people never pick a single woman since my book kind of won that one time.

    The addendum to Tansy’s theory is that if an award which only honours a single person at a time picks a man over and over and over again, most people don’t notice.

  • By AlisaK on 11 April 2013 at 9:03 pm

    I’ll amend.

    But yeah, I think that don’t notice on a *case by case* basis.

  • By AlisaK on 11 April 2013 at 9:04 pm

    Indeed.

  • By Helen on 12 April 2013 at 9:03 am

    very interesting. Not surprising, but always good to see the figures.
    I think its important to note that their is also a genre/gender factor at work here too, especially in terms of the conveners award. It is very rare for the YA (or horror) novel to have taken this one out, from memory/ experience. WOuld be good to check, but often you’ll find the SF novel taking precedence (which of course has majority of male winners) so the privileging of SF within the genre also works to ‘invisibly’ favour male writers.
    On the up side, your figures also show that the women dominating fantasy is not a new thing, but almost a commonplace.

    would be good to see the shortlist breakdown for the ditmars as well – more work!
    h :-)

  • By Sean the Bookonaut on 13 April 2013 at 5:58 pm

    Keep it coming Alisa, I really am enjoying your Phd. All the benefit none of the hard work :D

    But seriously it is a little sobering.

  • By AlisaK on 13 April 2013 at 8:22 pm

    glad you’re enjoying it!

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