EDITORIAL
But Where Are the Women?

Michael A. King

I have nothing against men. I believe I am one myself. And male or not, I want to be valued; I want to count; I want to have a voice.

Do women want these things? As husband of one woman and father of three, I have the impression this is certainly the case. But I would like not to speak for women but to hear from women.

Thus it has interested me—and with this issue of DSM caused me enough concern to report it—that women writers seem less inclined to ask to be heard in DSM than male writers. Quarter after quarter, when the time comes to assemble a given issue, usually plenty of articles by men are already on hand but fewer by women. This issue the matter came to a head: When I first assessed which articles were ready to run this quarter, only two were by women.

Unhappy, I made unusually proactive efforts to secure more articles by women I knew to be eloquent and insightful writers. Several came through with flying colors, thank God and them. Still female article writers in this issue are outnumbered seven to four by men (or eleven to four if poetry authors are included).

This seems not due to lack of female interest in DSM. Though no effort has been made yet to track precisely how many women versus men subscribe (and some readership we can’t track since it’s anonymous on the Internet), if anything women seem somewhat more likely to subscribe than men. This echoes what studies of reading and book buying tend to show, which is that women are the truly enthusiastic readers in North America.

So where are the women writers? Are they perhaps still less likely than men, so trained to speak up from day one, to claim their rightful public voices? Do they prefer to speak in other venues? When I asked my wife Joan to speculate, she suggested that perhaps (1) women still typically juggle a greater range of work and domestic duties than many men; and (2) women are less ready than men to say, "This is my time to write, violate it at your peril!"

Whatever the reasons, let this be clear: I think more women should be published in DreamSeeker Magazine. This is partly because women make up half the human race. Even more it’s because I just plain happen to think that some of the freshest writing these days, maybe because they’ve traditionally done less of it, is coming from women.

Now, lest I drag my own marriage too far into what I am bemoaning, I must cease writing and run to wash the dishes.

—Michael A. King