The Wordsmith&#39;s Forge

"If you want to change that, you need to figure out why it's happening ..."

I agree that this is the best way to start.
Unfortunately a lot of women find themselves locked into being the primary or even the only parent of their children rather than channeling that energy into creative projects such as writing. Even worse, a lot of women also find themselves locked into doing it again for their grandchildren. I've recently met two older women who are now doing it for their great-grandchildren! The mothers all hold jobs or are going to school.

Our schools don't do a very good job of teaching creative problem solving. Some people may not understand this, but the best way of teaching creative problem solving is teaching children handicrafts and having them do all the little art projects that children used to do in school which is usually the stuff that gets cut from education due to budget and time constraints due to the mistaken idea that it's "an unnecessary frill".
That's how creative problem solving, a major tool used in putting together a book, gets lumped into math class, IF it gets taught at all, which makes it largely unaccessable to the more creative girls.
Essay writing is seldom taught below college level these days which is where most creative girls would learn the skill. I think that simply bringing back the primary grades' arts and crafts and the teaching of essay writing would open the door to having more female writers ten to twenty years from now.
:)

From:

peoriapeoria.livejournal.com

I will concur that the arts getting short shrift is a problem, and I've got friends frustrated with their college freshmen that can't write cogently. Given the nature of work, I think we need to look at the school day, both the length and how it's used. But, a lengthened day needs to have physical activity and not be cut into shreds. That was a control method, and it's not apt in the new economy.

From:

I think the school day is already longer than most kids have the energy or attention for. If you work them too hard, they burn out and learn less, not more. Plus it cuts into family time, already threatened by multiple factors. My suggestions?

* Provide at least free breakfast and lunch for all students as part of the school package. Hungry kids find it difficult or impossible to learn and behave properly.

* Offer creative opportunities, not just things like arts and music, but at least one class -- and this should get longer as kids level up through the grades -- where each student is responsible for designing and pursuing projects of their own. Teach them how to identify their own interests and develop the necessary skills to support that. Then point out how those things connect back to other school subjects.

* Diversify assessment beyond standardized tests, which mainly measure test-taking ability, to see if students are actually able to apply the information they are supposedly absorbing. Can they figure out a discounted price? Assemble a healthy meal? Read instructions to assemble a product?

From:

Writing is neither an easy skill nor a quickly-learned skill for students to learn. What's worse, it isn't a skill that just any ol' mommy-track teacher can teach, because the teacher must be able to actually write a good essay herself before she can teach the skill to someone else. What's worst of all, is that I think it's a skill that MUST be learned while a child is growing up if that child is to master it.
I completely agree that kids badly need physical activity. What most people don't seem to understand is that kids badly need it at least every two hours all day long. I think we'd be able to cut out a lot of behavior problems if we gave our kids more chances to work off their excess energy.
:|

From:

>> Writing is neither an easy skill nor a quickly-learned skill for students to learn. What's worse, it isn't a skill that just any ol' mommy-track teacher can teach, because the teacher must be able to actually write a good essay herself before she can teach the skill to someone else. What's worst of all, is that I think it's a skill that MUST be learned while a child is growing up if that child is to master it. <<

Depends on what you mean by "writing." Functional writing is not hard, except for people with certain disabilities such as dyslexia. That includes things like writing a letter, making a blog post, narrating your vacation -- the everyday stuff people do with words. Writing a short, simple essay is a little more of a stretch. Writing for entertainment is considerably more challenging; not everyone has the talent for it. Technical or academic writing styles have a much higher skill demand.

A decent teacher should be able to introduce the basics of writing and identify things like: Does this paragraph have a topic sentence and at least two supporting sentences? That's not particularly hard. However, it does take more time than grading bubble-tests. So if you want students who can write, then you need to make time for teaching and grading that.

>> I completely agree that kids badly need physical activity. What most people don't seem to understand is that kids badly need it at least every two hours all day long. I think we'd be able to cut out a lot of behavior problems if we gave our kids more chances to work off their excess energy. <<

Exactly. Young primates are biologically programmed to learn. They typically do this by mimicking adults. Another way is through exploring a rich and varied environment. They have not evolved to sit still for 8 hours a day. Putting them in an impoverished environment with only one adult and forcing them through dull activities is tedious and minimally effective -- and it can destroy the intrinsic joy of learning. So then they only perform as forced, and when that force goes away, a significant number of them just ... sort of stop doing anything, because the gears are stripped. That's not a good result.

From:

>> Unfortunately a lot of women find themselves locked into being the primary or even the only parent of their children rather than channeling that energy into creative projects such as writing. <<

That's a problem. Honestly, though, almost everyone is working more for less these days, which raises stress and restricts most energy for survival needs. That is no way to have a healthy culture.

>> Our schools don't do a very good job of teaching creative problem solving. <<

Agreed.

>> Some people may not understand this, but the best way of teaching creative problem solving is teaching children handicrafts and having them do all the little art projects that children used to do in school which is usually the stuff that gets cut from education due to budget and time constraints due to the mistaken idea that it's "an unnecessary frill". <<

That only works for kids whose talents incline them toward arts and crafts. Those gifted with linguistic, musical, kinesthetic, social, or other talents may not encounter appropriate challenges. They need a wide range of stimulation. Give them puzzles to solve and random stuff to fool around with. Once you figure out what they're best at and most interested in, help them explore those areas in more depth. If all the school teaches is memorization and regurgitation, nobody's going to learn much of real use.

>> Essay writing is seldom taught below college level these days which is where most creative girls would learn the skill. I think that simply bringing back the primary grades' arts and crafts and the teaching of essay writing would open the door to having more female writers ten to twenty years from now. <<

Likely so.

From:

" If all the school teaches is memorization and regurgitation, nobody's going to learn much of real use."

Now you understand the problem: Our public school system relies almost totally on those!
:(

From:

Essay writing is seldom taught below college level these days

Really? I swear, it was ALL I fucking did in English class pretty much from middle school on! Analyze boring old tomes and write scholarly essays about the Freudian importance of the color red or some such shit. I pretty much did NO creative writing in school after the age of fifteen; it was alllll essays, because that was part of our standardized tests. (This was about ten years ago, by the way.)

I swear to god, if I never have to write about the feminist significance of the voice in Lolita ever again, I will die happy.

--Rogan

From:

I'm not sure where you went to school but it sure as H@$$ wasn't in Mississippi.
When I finally realized that I was NEVER going to have a HS English class that actually let us do any writing, I started taking all my English classes during the summer and then I skipped a year of high school (graduated in '77). I don't know what fool decided that teaching only grammer and sentence structure throughout junior high and high school was the way to go but I sincerely hope he's having fun with the Devil and will continue to throughout Eternity. Most of the people I attended school with graduated semi-literate at best. Things still hadn't changed when I worked as a sub in the same school system during the late 80's either.
D@mn it, I so wish I could have attended your school!
(Goes off to pout about the injustice of all this!)
:^{

From:

Ahhhh, that'd explain it. Yeah, I was in Texas back in the mid 00s. We had essays pounded into us, but never learned grammar or sentence structure. THAT stuff I didn't learn until I was in college. (Yes, even though I took four years of a foreign language previously.)

--Rogan

From:

You still got the better end of the deal. We were bored out of our skulls in those 7th-12th grade English classes. We'd all had two YEARS of sentence parts and sentence structure by the time we got to seventh grade. If in two years' time you can't learn what verbs, nouns, articles and etc. are, you just aren't capable of learning it. Writing and the thinking skills needed to make what you write both efficient and intelligent are far harder to master.

Four YEARS of a foreign language....on HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL!
Now I'm really upset. All I got was a year of Spanish and a year of Latin. By the time I'd reached my student teaching section, the county public school I went to had FIRED my old Latin professor because it was annexed by the city and the city didn't want to allow only that one school to offer Latin while the rest of its schools went without. He was a good teacher and he didn't deserve to be fired for a BS reason.
:\

From:

I can only imagine.

Four YEARS of a foreign language....on HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL!

Yes! That I did like, especially since my high school I think may have been the only one in the area to have a Japanese teacher. Definitely kindled my love for the language, that's for sure. No German, though; our languages offered were often limited by what teachers were available.

--Rogan

From:

matrixmann

Perhaps editors are also like "already heard this a thousand times, come on, this is not interesting (to me)". (At least that's also what they need to take are for - the economical aspect of publishing).

From:

tuftears.livejournal.com

Blind reading? Hide the author name on manuscripts read by slush pile readers! They won't do this for manuscripts from authors under contract of course but those are already 'in the system'.

From:

Some places that use submissions management software already do this. It might be interesting to compare the gender ratios there to other places.

From:

westrider.livejournal.com

I know I've heard at least a few anecdotes from female writers who started getting much better acceptance rates after they started submitting under just their initials. And further anecdotes from some of them that confirm that it was, in fact, because without a gender-specific name attached, they were assumed to be male.

From:

That's why some women take a male pseudonym too.

From:

This is odd, because in library school, I was taught that there were MORE women than men publishing youth lit, that not enough was being sold to boys, and that this was a serious problem that needed addressing.

--Rogan

From: