Jesus Creed
No one, and I mean no one, is doing more for evangelical women in the publishing industry than Zondervan’s Katya Covrett. Here’s why: she’s the academic editor at Zondervan, and you can’t get more evangelical than Zondervan. She’s worked tirelessly to get more female authors, to get more female authors published, and to enhance publicity for female authors. She’s been doing this for years. Every year there has been slow but steady process… just wait another decade and you’ll notice many shifts.
We need to be careful about bean counting because publishing is not that easy. There’s a complex and I’ll take them one by one. First, to be an academic author you need to have a PhD. Second, most often you need to have a position at a school. Third, you have to have a schedule that permits writing and time to develop your craft. Fourth, you have to want to publish and not all profs want to — some would rather be teaching profs (which is 100% fine in most institutions). Fifth, women are pressed to speak and teach and travel and speak and teach and travel constantly. Sixth, writing often means wrangling with others about what you write and there are many who simply don’t like that hassle — male and female. Getting the PhD, for which there is now a flourishing number of female PhDs in evangelicalism (I’ll avoid the complementarian suppression of female academics for this post), is not the issue.
The issue is the complex process and culture. In a world in which there are fewer PhDs by women there is already a complex process that diminishes the number. You want to know the percentage of male evangelicals who have published one book? (Clue: it’s not very high and my guess is that females are more published percentage wise than males.)
Whatever you do, don’t point your finger at Zondervan or its Russian editor. Point your finger at a culture that mostly silenced women and point your finger at a culture that is changing … slowly … but changing.
I am a woman. I am the wife of one and the mother of two, a teen and a tween, so life is full. I am an editor at a Christian publishing house—and an academic editor at that. Nerd that I am, I am more prone to cuddle up with a heavy exposition of Romans or the latest and greatest work of theology—with a red pen to boot—than with a bestselling Amish romance novel. As if I did not already have enough in my life, I am exploring a doctoral program on another continent. I am Russian—not just by birth but by upbringing. As such, I did not grow up in what the popular opinion regards as the “civilized West,” and so, to an extent, I represent a degree of ethnic diversity and can still fake a pretty heavy Russian accent when necessary (and, yes, I have a large cat to go with it)….
Fast-forward to December 3, 2015.
It took me a few hours, if I am honest, to simmer down after reading Brenton Dickieson’s post. “How could you! … Have you any idea how hard we—I!—have worked to get this far?! … I have at times put my reputation on the line for this! … And did it occur to you to come and ask us, ask me?! … I’ve busted my ass for this!!! … How—! … UGH!”
Deep breaths.
As a female academic editor, I am acutely aware of the imbalance (Is that even the right word? What’s the word when we are not even close to any sort of “balance”?) between male and female authors in publishers’ catalogs in general and the Zondervan Academic catalog in particular. Having worked hard to address this problem for over a decade, I can say from personal experience that the lack of women in publishers’ catalogs is often not for lack of trying. (I am leaving aside those obvious ones that don’t bother trying.) With as few women as enter the world of Christian academia, you typically start with a small pool to begin with, and once you layer on limitations of discipline, expertise/specialization, approach, the book idea itself, or any theological parameters, you are left with a handful—at best. And the few (any?) women you are left with are already booked up years out or have other priorities, commitments, or preferences. Many simply say no. I am not making excuses, but, strategy or not, publishers are constrained by the shape of the academy. The representation of women in our academy—or lack thereof—is alarming. We are in a better position now than even a decade ago but not nearly where we should be. If women are to be better represented in publishers’ catalogs, it has to be a publishing vision upfront—not an afterthought—and a commitment in the publisher’s acquisitions strategy and throughout the life of the edited work or a series. But even then we often fail.
Deep breaths.
Now in my fourteenth year with what has become Zondervan Academic, I look back at the past decade to take stock of where we are. I look back not to pat our team or myself on the back, but to gain perspective. So, what do I see?
I see dearth—still.
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