How many non-fiction female authors have you listened to?
I was in the queue for the excellent Taiga ride at Linnanmäki while at the Mydata conference. While in the long queue, as there was no single rider queue (but I did get called a head a couple of time as single rider). I heard a podcast called the deep dive on the subject of the male crisis. Something I have been interested in for ages and fits within some work I’d like to do more of under cubicgarden.ltd.
There is a lot of great things in the conversation but this got me really thinking (about 36:50, I couldn’t get the link to timestamp working). Sorya Chemaly uses a personal experience of talking with 2 men with teenage children at a party who also have a book club book group. They find out she is a writer/author, then ask her if she likes writing non-fiction?
Soraya mentions she likes writing it but is frustrated because men generally only read non-fiction by men not women. So as a woman, she loses half the audience straight away.
The men have a discussion between themselves in the open asking if they ever had a female written book in their book club. Turns out no they had not ever, and start to openly wonder why. Soraya, puts it clear what the problem in the podcast.
This got me thinking how many non-fiction books have I read which are written by a woman?
As I read a lot of non-fiction, I looked though my bookwrym to see.
So far in 2025 I have read 20 books. The ones which are written by a female are. Unprocssed, Supremacy, Empire of AI, Careless people, Data a love story, Mood Machine, Refusing compulsory sexuality and Limitarianism.
8/20 is better than I thought it would be, I am currently reading a few book including Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown for example, which is very thoughtful.
In 2024 I read 24 books and the ones which were written by a female were the Shock doctorine, Extremely online, Doppelganger, Extremely hardcore, Radical intimacy, Lets talk about loneliness, The tech coup, Automating Inequality and Together.
9/24, less good but happy I am improving in 2025.
For companion, 2023 was pretty bad with only 3 women, Silicon Values, The big con and The will to change.
However the discussion doesn’t stop there, because how many of the women I read are women of colour? From a brief look. Karen Hao, and Sherronda J.Brown from this year and Simone Heng and Sophie K. Rosa from 2024. Although Bell Hooks from 2023 which is a important writer on this exact subject.
Soraya makes the important point that if you are not aware of this all, nothing will change. My eyes are wide open now. Thanks!
