There’s a lot of hype around recent VIDA figures on where women writers stand compared with men for books published and reviewed, which, according to the VIDA, are fewer for women in both categories. But the figures appear in a vacuum, with data absent in a host of areas, like how many women are writing, per medium, and how many are submitting what they write.

Here’s a straw poll on where women stand in various other areas of publishing:

• Membership in writing organizations, particularly for networking: “We currently have 217 paid members; 94 are men, and 123 are women.” Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association board member and membership coordinator Dick Benton
• College library acquisitions by author gender: “Out cataloger can’t run a report by sex of author. But we can do a sample from our on-order box, and count how many male/female authors for the books we’re going to order. I picked two letters (M and W) of titles from our on-order file, because they were the biggest. I got 12 female authors and 19 male authors.” Tunxis Community College librarian Carolyn Boulay
• Women as writing clients and as success stories: “60% of my clients are women. I hear about their publishing successes, and it’s about equal, men to women. Repeat customers are about equal, too.” Acclaimed author and instructor Mary Carroll Moore
• Percentage of those lamenting the difficulties of the publishing industry: “Only [two women] have not complained in my presence about how hard it is. In all my conversations with women writers, I haven’t heard one say that they think men have an easier time of it, or make more money. It’s a provocative question, and I think if someone were willing to do the research, s/he might discover that the publishing industry does indeed discriminate against women. Anecdotally, though, I haven’t come across this. I have a lot of male friends who have had just as much trouble as my women friends in terms of publishing both fiction and nonfiction. Ditto the advance thing. The men I know haven’t gotten bigger advances than the women I know.” Prill Boyle, author of Defying Gravity: A Celebration of Late-Blooming Women, member of Breaking Into Publishing, and host of the cable TV program Ageless

These are only a few of the questions we could ask and issues we could raise about where women writers are in terms of publishing. But there’s another, more important question. So what?

Even if specific figures could be gleaned showing that women submit less frequently for publication and to publications in any form, there’s still the question of whether women desire to submit as often as men. Hard-to-quantify realities like this aside, it seems that what should matter most is equity. Are women paid as much for what they write? Are their contracts as fair as those of men — including for online rights.

These issues mirror the concerns behind the Writers Guild of America, East (an affiliate of the International Federation of Journalists, of which I, too, am a member via the National Writers Union) strike of 2007 to 2008, when writers walked out en masse, supported by the Screen Actors Guild and the more open-minded (and perhaps more independent) actors and actresses like Zac Braff and Tina Fey because writers’ rights were being compromised.

The question of fairness, especially given the explosion of venues for writers, seems increasingly important. And that’s the great thing about this discussion — it’s being had. Okay, the VIDA stats have holes, but they’re a start, and they’ve generated buzz. Which should get writers — women and men — thinking more about where the times are headed. As we do this, we might begin by defining our terms, even familiar ones like “publishing.” Are we talking traditional or self-publishing, print or online — and does that include blogs — for pay or for other forms of reimbursement?

Of all the many things said lately about these publishing times and how they affect women, one thing is sure, they are changing. And this opens a great opportunity, as VIDA’a Amy King intimated, not only to track trends but to shape them.