Is publishing experiencing gender flight?
MEN'S CURRENT PLACE IN LITERATURE
Cheerleading. That’s how this piece started for me.
I was watching a video that spoke about how cheerleading used to be exclusively a male thing. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, men were the ones cheering on their male athlete counterparts. It wasn’t until men went to war that women were allowed to enter cheerleading and by the end of the second world war, cheerleading had become dominated by women.
Men never went back.
That’s gender flight. It’s the observation that a gender leaves an activity or industry because that activity or industry becomes associated with the other gender. Gender flight is also called male flight because men are typically the ones doing the flying, meaning men are the ones leaving these activities that become associated with females. But it can also happen in reverse.
For example, women were the first programmers and coders. Pre 1960s, women were the ones handling the programming for computers, which weren’t a household thing but used almost exclusively for business and also some military activity. Today when we think about anything computer science related, we see that it is a male dominated industry (this is also reflected in the numbers).
This gender flight phenomenon can also be seen in nursing. Nurses were exclusively male, typically operating within the military. Today, you can probably count on one hand the number of male nurses you’ve seen in a hospital. My mom is a nurse (retired) and visiting her at the hospital for decades, I’ve only met one male nurse.
Okay, so what does this have to do with publishing? I’ve written before about the implications of publishing becoming more feminine, here and here to be exact. We know that hardcover titles are now 50/50 men and women, which is a giant leap from the 20% female titles back in 1970. We also know that 80% of books are now sold to women, that the publishing industry itself is between 70%-80% women, and that the most influential book clubs in the world are all run by women.
Click here to read my novel, And Then There Was Us.
I want to add something else to the mix.
The rise of BookTok is also adding to the feminization of publishing. And because that is the case, there have been so much more discussion about the anti-intellectualizing of literature. Do you think it’s a coincidence that these two trends are occurring at the same time? The historical ritual has been that when women begin dominating something previously dominated by men, that thing becomes devalued.
This phenomenon is true in health (nurses are some of the most undervalued people on this earth), education (teaching has also become mainly female, particularly at the grade school level, and are there any occupations on this earth as devalued as teachers), the switch from male to female in parks and recreation jobs came with a 57% decrease in wages. These are facts.
Now we’re at an inflection point again. With the increased participation of women, there is uproar about literature’s current trajectory as an intellectual undertaking. More plainly, men are complaining that books are becoming too feminine. And if books become too feminine, what will happen to our boys? Taken together, all of these factors point to the potential gender flight of men away from publishing. The absence of young, popular male authors is something critics will point to as proof of this phenomenon.
So knowing all of this, is it fair to assume that publishing will go the way of cheerleading or nursing? Will men leave and never come back? I’m laughing as I type this and I’ll tell you why.
It’s funny to me that equality in an industry is so alarming for some (so many) people. I stated earlier that publishing is now 50/50 when it comes to titles released (more or less). Yet if you look at some of the public reaction, you’d think men are being driven out with guns to their backs.
That said, is it actually a bad thing for the industry to consider ways of creating stories that would proactively appeal to young boys and men? I believe that readers need to feel seen, and if I’m being totally transparent, my most popular book is written for young boys and even has the word boy in the title. This was intentional, as my publisher (Scholastic) asked me to write a book aimed primarily at this demographic. This means that publishing recognizes the trend and is trying to address it.
The most interesting new development has been the launch of Conduit Press. This new indie publisher is funded by writer and critic Jude Cook and will be, “focusing initially on male authors.” That was according to a piece written in The Guardian. What else did Cook have to say about this?
“This new breed of young female authors, spearheaded by Sally Rooney et al, ushered in a renaissance for literary fiction by women, giving rise to a situation where stories by new male authors are often overlooked, with a perception that the male voice is problematic…We believe there is ambitious, funny, political and cerebral fiction by men that is being passed by.”
Is this good or bad? According to Cook, he is simply correcting the current overcorrection that has happened in publishing over the past twenty years.
“Excitement and energy around new and adventurous fiction is around female authors – and this is only right as a timely corrective.”
The absence of male decision makers (to my previous point about the industry being 70+% female) is what is concerning for Cook. Male perspectives are being drowned out, and whether that is purposely or not, he feels the need to create a press that will produce books for male readers.
When I look at the male “influencers” or the men leading the storytelling through popular podcasts right now, I actually think it’s more important than ever for powerful male voices and stories to be published. Men need alternate perspectives and books should be part of that shaping. And while I’m not convinced that gender flight is occurring in the same way it has in other industries, I do acknowledge that boys and men, for whatever reason, are feeling excluded from publishing. We can’t let that happen.
I think stories shape how we see ourselves and how we see the world. Literature has been and continues to be at the forefront of culture and we need its stories to touch and connect with all readers.
But what do you think? Is this gender flight? Or are men fighting to stay included?
In my world of children's and middle grade books (which I think you should absolutely continue to write in, as per your recent note ;) ) 30% of main characters published in 2024 were male, and only 20% of authors were male. https://www.samsubity.com/mg-landscape-2024/
Every kid deserves to see themselves seen and represented in the books they read and in the authors who write them.
Kern Carter,
I read your piece with interest, especially the framing around "gender flight" in publishing. But as I sat with your words, a different undercurrent emerged—one that feels deeper, older, and more pressing than whether men are leaving literature.
You speak of shifts in gender representation as though they destabilize the value of the work itself. But what if the devaluation you’re noticing isn’t about gender at all, and instead is about power—how it resists change, especially when those historically excluded begin to speak?
In the past 5–10 years, we’ve seen a rise in trans and non-binary writers who are not only contributing to literature but expanding its very boundaries—stylistically, thematically, and politically. And yet they’re largely left out of conversations like this. Why? Could it be that publishing’s supposed “feminization” isn’t the problem—but rather the visibility of voices that have never been centered?
What you call gender flight might be better understood as a response to the erosion of a status quo that has long privileged white, cis, male, straight, Christian voices. When that dominance is questioned, the cultural reflex often isn’t curiosity—it’s recoil. That’s the context in which DEI is suddenly labeled “woke,” in which inclusion becomes a threat rather than a step toward justice.
Literature, as you said, helps us shape how we see ourselves. So I ask: Who do we become when we act as though the presence of women, trans people, queer people, people of color diminishes the intellectual value of writing? What does it say about our cultural barometer when the democratization of authorship is met not with celebration, but with skepticism and fear?
The conversation should not be how to bring men “back” to literature, as if their presence defines its worth. It should be how to honor the fullness of human expression and dismantle the systems that have told so many for so long: your voice doesn’t matter.
Because voices do matter—especially those that have been told, again and again, that they shouldn’t.
And if that’s discomforting? Maybe that’s what transformation feels like.