Genders and Genres

 

I originally posted this at Alexandria couple of months ago, but thought it might be of interest here, too.

A little while back there was a thread on Rod Dreher’s blog about literature, specifically fiction.  One ancillary thing that struck me was what seemed to be a gender divide.  Rod discussed how he read much more non-fiction than fiction, and pondered that fact.  I noted that I, too, have read far more non-fiction in my life than fiction, by a two-to-one or even three-to-one ratio.  That got me to thinking.

My father is pretty well-read, but I’d say he’s read non-fiction at an even greater proportion than I have.  Throughout my life it’s typical for me to see him sitting with a book in his lap.  Almost every time that I can remember or that I note the cover, it’s non-fiction.

My two closest male friends break about even–they read lots of fiction, probably slightly more than not–but they read a lot of non-fiction, too, particularly history.  I’d say my brother-in-law breaks about even, also.

On the other hand, I noticed that most of the women who commented on the thread discussed mainly fiction.  My wife reads mainly fiction, too–probably five-to-one fiction to non-fiction or more.  My mother reads mainly fiction–when she reads non-fiction it’s usually for a specific reason (home repair, exercise–books like that).  My sister, when she has time to read for entertainment, goes almost always for fiction–she says that she has to read so much technical stuff professionally that she needs the escape.  She does read a moderate amount of non-fiction on her own time, but less than fiction, I think.

The point is that I wonder if there’s a tendency towards a gender divide–if men trend towards non-fiction, and women towards fiction, in a very broad way, of course.  Stereotypically, men are drawn to ideas and abstractions and women to emotions and relationships (remember, I said it’s stereotypical!).  I wonder if there’s something along that line operative in literary preferences.

Anyone who has any thoughts on this, or who wishes to share genre preferences, is certainly welcome to do so–discuss amongst yourselves!