Reviewer Preferences and Gender Disparities in Aesthetic Judgments

TL;DR

This study investigates gender biases in aesthetic judgments of literary quality, revealing that male and female reviewers exhibit opposite gender preferences, which may reflect cultural gender antagonism.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using literary reviews as a proxy for aesthetic judgment to identify gender bias in preferences.

Findings

Male reviewers prefer male writers

Female reviewers prefer female writers

Gender bias may reflect cultural antagonism

Abstract

Aesthetic preferences are considered highly subjective resulting in inherently noisy judgements of aesthetic objects, yet certain aspects of aesthetic judgement display convergent trends over time. This paper present a study that uses literary reviews as a proxy for aesthetic judgement in order to identify systematic components that can be attributed to bias. Specifically we find that judgement of literary quality in newspapers displays a gender bias in preference of male writers. Male reviewers have a same gender preference while female reviewer show an opposite gender preference. While alternative accounts exist of this apparent gender disparity, we argue that it reflects a cultural gender antagonism.