Every year in late November, approximately 4,500 biblical scholars from
all around the world meet up for the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) Annual
Meeting in a US city. The SBL Annual Meeting is among the largest international
meeting places for scholars working in the fields of Biblical and Religious
Studies and is a main event for anyone specialising in biblical and related
writings. For four days, papers are presented, sessions are attended and recent
publications are discussed.
Among the most prestigious sessions at the Annual Meetings are review
sessions and sessions set up in honour of the research or the career of a scholar.
Over the last five years, the SBL has hosted approximately 30-35 review
sessions and 10-15 honorary sessions each year. These sessions showcase the work of a
scholar and tend to be well attended. They are likely to boost book sales and be
career building, and they may be part of the process of authorising the status,
or the memory, of a scholar as a leading figure in his or her field. Review sessions
are important also because scholars in Biblical Studies are still associated
with and recognised primarily for their books. Given that review and honorary sessions
are likely to be important, the question of who gets their books reviewed, how and, where,
warrants some attention.
In this blog post, I focus on one aspect of this question by asking how
many female scholars get their books reviewed, how many honorary sessions are
set up to celebrate women’s careers and how this compares to their male
colleagues. I have gone systematically through the SBL Annual Meeting programme
books from 2011 to 2015, counting review sessions and honorary sessions,
looking for the relative distribution of men and women. (Other aspects deserve
attention as well. For instance, ethnicity, or the intersection of gender and
ethnicity, have not been dealt with here.)
Review sessions
Fig. 1
|
2011
|
2012
|
2013
|
2014
|
2015
|
Authors/editors having their books reviewed,
total
|
43
|
34
|
34
|
38
|
49
|
Men having their books reviewed
|
33
|
22
|
27
|
28
|
32
|
Women having their books reviewed
|
10
|
12
|
7
|
10
|
17
|
This overview shows the total number of authors/editors having their
books reviewed at the SBL Annual Meetings over the last five years and the
distribution of male and female authors/editors.
One general tendency is apparent: many of the books reviewed at the SBL
are authored or edited by men. Between 64 and 76 % of authors and editors
having their books reviewed from 2011 to 2015 were men, while between 36 and
24% of the authors/editors were women. In share numbers, the male dominance is
obvious. However, since, according to the 2015 Society Report approximately
75% of SBL members are in fact men, the numbers are not unreasonable per se.
Two further tendencies should be noted, though. First, many of the
review sessions devoted to books published by women are either hosted by SBL
groups dedicated to studies of gender and/or women, or they are special
sessions with such a thematic focus. This does not reduce the importance of these
review sessions in any way, but this tendency implies that in the remaining
review sessions organised by SBL groups and sessions that do not focus on
gender issues, in particular, the relative amount of reviews of books published
by women is lower.
The second tendency deserves some additional attention; namely, the
distribution of sessions devoted fully to one single male or female
scholar and his/her book.
Fig. 2
|
2011
|
2012
|
2013
|
2014
|
2015
|
Sessions fully devoted to one single
author/editor, total
|
23
|
14
|
20
|
25
|
26
|
Sessions devoted to men
|
19
|
12
|
18
|
20
|
21
|
Sessions devoted to women
|
4
|
2
|
2
|
5
|
5
|
While Fig.1 shows the total of all authors/editors having their books
reviewed during an Annual Meeting, Fig. 2 counts the number of sessions
dedicated fully to one single author/editor and his or her book. The figure
shows that between 80 and 90% of all book review sessions devoted in their
entirety to one author or editor are dedicated to male scholars and their books.
Hence, when focusing on these particular sessions, the number of female
scholars and their books are low. In other words, at the occasions when books
published by women are reviewed women have a higher tendency to either share
the session and, hence the attention with another or many other colleagues.
Alternatively, the woman is part of a team of authors and editors and shares the
session with them. Either way, the frequency of a session devoted to a single,
female, author/editor is remarkably low.
Honorary sessions
My search through the programme books from 2011-2015 also included a
look at honorary sessions.
Fig. 3
|
2011
|
2012
|
2013
|
2014
|
2015
|
Honourees, total
|
20
|
7
|
13
|
12
|
8
|
Male honourees
|
17
|
5
|
12
|
10
|
7
|
Female honourees
|
3
|
2
|
1
|
2
|
1
|
Fig. 3 shows the number of honourees from 2011 to 2015, and the
distribution of male and female scholars being honoured. I defined an honorary
session as an event organised in honour of a particular scholar to celebrate
his or her career or scholarship, his/her life or contribution to a field, or a
session set up to celebrate an awardee.
The general tendency is clear: sessions honouring a female scholar and
her contribution to the field are rare. On average, 13% of the honorary
sessions are dedicated to women. In share numbers, one might say that sessions
in honour of women’s scholarship and careers are as good as non-existent (The
total number of program sessions over the years 2011-2015 has varied between
449 and 523, according to the 2015 Society Report). From 2011-2015, there were never more than three such
sessions in honour of women at any Annual Meeting. In 2013 and 2015, there was
only one.
It should be noted that my definition of an honorary session did not
include sessions dedicated to male scholars serving an “emblematical” function
in the sense that their names are representing a particular perspective or way
of thinking. Hence, sessions attributed to the work and impact of, e.g.
Kierkegaard, Bultman, Tillich, or Bonhoeffer were not taken into consideration.
If they were included, which they arguably could be, as they show how the
memory of exceptional male scholarship is kept alive, the relative percentage
of female honourees would have been even lower than 10%. None of these “emblematic”
sessions are, as far as I have seen, dedicated to a perspective associated with
a female scholar.
It could and surely will be argued that the reason for the low representation
of female honourees is the historical dominance of men in the field and, that, in
the generations of scholars that are now typically celebrated at the SBL, women
in the Academe were few. It is possible, thus, that the number of women will rise
during the next decades due to the increased number of women in academic jobs.
However, this hypothesis remains to be checked and, at the time of writing, it
is an hypothesis only.
Who is reviewed and who is celebrated at the SBL Annual Meetings, and
why does it matter?
The present exploration is brief, simple and preliminary. There are several
questions I do not have ample material to answer. I am for instance not
claiming to know the relative amount of female SBL members getting their
newly published books reviewed at the Annual Meetings, nor do I know how this
number compares to the situation for their male counterparts. I leave this for
further exploration. Likewise, I do not have sufficient material to argue why
the situation is as it is. However, I would like to make some suggestions. On
one level, one might say that the numbers are the result of every single
decision made by chairs and steering boards of the various SBL groups. If this
is the level of explanation we choose to accept, I am as responsible for the
general outcome as anyone else, having served and still serving as chair and at
steering boards in the SBL system. Although the figures above should clearly serve
as a reminder to both chairs and steering boards, I would argue that the
relative lack of women should be explored primarily as part of a broader,
systemic tendency. Eva Mroczek has called attention to the fact that during the
last decade the three most prestigious awards endowed by the SBL have had only male
recipients. Likewise, Ellen Muehlberger has highlighted the male dominance of
the Review of Biblical Literature, which was founded by the SBL (here). My findings are adding to this picture.
I am, most of all, worried about the impression created by the
imbalance displayed by this exploration of the review and honorary sessions at
the SBL Annual Meetings. When scholars who get a full review session dedicated
to their books tend to be men, and when scholars who are celebrated for their
work are almost exclusively men, it is very likely that the imagination
of the successful scholar will be shaped in a male image.
Thanks are due to Eva Mroczek, Ellen Muehlberger, Torgeir Sørensen and
Benjamin G. Wright III.
