Thank you, Wendi, for bringing up an excellent point—of course the fantasy genre is no more a monolith than any other industry, or subset of the industry. There are fantastic authors doing great work in fantasy (I try very hard to be one of them).

Contained within your reply are two keys to dismantling the whole crusty edifice of the problem. All the authors you listed here who do a good job are women. That’s another problem fantasy has to kick. Of course there are traditionally published female authors, and I would add Robin Hobb to the ones you listed above. But in general, it is a boy’s club with a big sign on the door that reads ‘NO GIRLS ALLOWED.’

I have a 50/50 ratio of women in my stories (again, because that’s how nature works). If we had the same ratio in the fantasy publishing industry itself, there would likely be no gender problem in the genre whatsoever. But the series that get picked up, published and then heavily, heavily marketed—and, because of that, go on to become the tentpole series of the genre—are always written by white dudes. (Usually ones with beards).

I, of course, am a white dude with a beard, so this might sound hypocritical coming from me. I can’t do anything about who I am. But I’m doing my best to rectify the mistakes of those who came before me. I do this partly with the books themselves, and partly with what I choose to say on my platform (including this article).

And in the future, I hope to be able to amplify the voices of female authors (and editors and publishers) who will, naturally bring about the ultimate end of the general problem of gender disparity we see today.