What's sad is that even fair-minded people can exclude women; it's automatic, it's the norm. I won't accuse the list-makers personally of misogyny, because I doubt they think (on a conscious level, anyway) that women can't be good writers. I also don't think that anyone should belabor the issue and force every list to be half and half (as Laura Miller suggested, that is dishonest). But, how often do people come up with literary prize lists, invited panelists, etc. that are all women, just by coincidence? Why does that never happen?

I wish it wasn't necessary to call out someone's gender when they write a book/make art/run for office or whatever -- but things like this make clear that gender-blind is still not gender-equal. To me, this means that anthologies of women writers and books of women artists and Blogher and so forth are still necessary, though certainly not the complete solution. Not to shield these works/authors from the mainstream or create a separate sphere for them, but to get them out there, so the end-of-year list-makers can know about them (and regular people, too), and then we can take "woman" out of their titles and just call them writers or whatever.

For a more impassioned take on this topic, see Bidisha in the Guardian recently: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/13/bidisha-poetry-sexism-misogyny

As a textbook editor who creates tables of contents for literature anthologies, I have struggled with these very issues. Years ago, we printed mostly the "canon" in our textbooks--meaning mostly dead white males. With California and TX taking the lead, we began to include more diversity in our books (typically there is a quota of sorts--such and such a percentage must be women, black, hispanic, asian, etc). At first I found this to be utterly PC nonsense. A good work of literature should be judged only for its own merit, I thought, nevermind the sex or ethnicity of the author. But as I began to search for lit to fill my quotas, I realized that there were all kinds of wonderful, amazing works out there that I had been missing. And also that sometimes the canon didn't stand up to scrutiny. Don't get me wrong--I am a huge fan of Hemingway and Cheever, but Benitez and Adichie blow me away as well.

Anyway, regardless, I am going to give the PW editors a break and take them at their word since they did in fact read through thousands of works in order to make their selections.

They don't mean to keep out half the human race, the half that mainly reads, it's just an oversight, and soooo sad, nothing outrageous about it. We should never get outraged we have men to do that for us.They get soooo angry so easily and they can't even blame it on hormones. They'll get the awards and we'll read the books that portray us as hags and whores. Why we should just be glad we don't have to wear a table cloth sized covering with eye holes barely big enough to allow for reading. We should just be glad we are able to read. We should

rejoice in these neverending slights because they could be more vicious forms of violence. One of these days we'll learn to shut up about it, when the tablcloth replaces over-priced rags trotted around by starved girls to make us all feel sooo bad.

While it is entirely possible for a list to randomly come up as all male or all female in a given year -- since you can't predict who will and who won't have a great book anyway -- what are the odds that ten out of ten are by the same gender?

The top five list: 1 in 32

The top ten list: 1 in 1024.

That's .098% chance. Roughly one-tenth of one percent.

Don't bet on it.

All those nasty smart girls who were probably laughing at them in high school, though it was hard to tell since they always had a book in front of their faces. Nevermind, their brother the jock told them what girls were good for, and gee, wouldn't it be great to be admired like a jock. Not jock material, no problem go to New York and live the artist's dream, maybe scribble a line or two, afterall, if girls can do it, how hard could it be? Get to New York get rejected for being ill-read. Crib up on those manly man writers, toil for years work your way up the food chain at Publisher's Weekley. Put out a list to impress the former jock brother, now the obese parent of smart girls, who make him look stupid in comparison. Joe wouldn't read a book by a girl, of course. He's at least as smart as those British kids J.K. Rowlands adopted initials to fool, back before she wrote the most read books of all time. Well,of course it was probably her brother who actually invented everything.She might have added a few things, girls can help manly men sometimes .. can't they?

The Orange Prize jury is all female. The WIlla Prize is for women writers only.

Why isn't that sexist? Oh......

Everyone knows that human people are equally adept at writing. If there are no females on this (albeit subjective) list, maybe it's because there haven't been any stories that passed by their snouts worthy of being judged the best of the best. Maybe it was a dry year for split-tails...

Who cares what's on some critic's ten-best list anyway? Most critics have their heads up their asses. I certainly don't choose my reading material by what they think.

As a woman I’m suspicious when a list like this comes out and not a single female writer is included. But it’s obviously not as simple as “Johnny-statistics” would have you believe.

The chances of all 10 writers being of a single gender is less than 1%? Really? One percent? So what about a list of the best chefs in NYC in a given year? Less than 1% chance of them all being men?

What about the best basketball players in the world? Still less than 1%? How about chess players world wide? Or horse jockeys? Or Air force pilots? Civil engineers? Each one of them less than a 1% chance? I’m not sure your argument seems reasonable anymore.

My mother told me many years ago that a woman shouldn’t base her self-worth on how well she competes with men. She said be my best person and follow my own passions. That I should find value in my individuality, my own talents. And to be weary of group-think and victimhood. It pisses me off when I hear someone supposedly speaking for women with outrage over some something like this. I don’t have time to read thousands or even hundreds of new books a year. So I couldn’t put forth a valid opinion on whether or not the ten best books this year were all written by men. It’s possible. Just as the ten best chefs in NYC this year are probably men. But that doesn’t mean there are women doing incredible and original things in this town, or towns around the world.

As for me, I like men and women. I don’t feel the need to cheer for one against the other. But to each is own. I would suggest if you’re angry about the list it might actually have more to do with your own sense of failure or disappointment where your life is, rather than a legitimate beef with a publishers list of authors.